1 Introduction
In the most optimistic accounts, Anatolian âhistoryâ is made to begin in the Middle Bronze Age (hereafter MBA) and treated as a prologue to Hittite history (e.g., Bryce 2005:21â40), a western offshoot of Mesopotamian history (e.g., Veenhof 2017a), or an independent historical context (e.g., Larsen 2015). This is the period when written sourcesâthe markers of âhistoryâ against an illiterate âprehistoryââare for the first time produced and circulated among Anatolian urban centers in the frame of the Old Assyrian KÄrum period (1950â1750â¯BCE). The Old Assyrian texts represent an invaluable source of information not only on the activities of Assyrian merchants, their relations with their homeland, and the itineraries they followed but also on the indigenous environment(s) in which they moved and interacted (see also Chapter 4). Nonetheless, the characterization of the MBA as a historical period is mostly a matter of spatiotemporal perspective that ultimately depends on our objectives. It is obvious in an Assyro-centric or Mesopotamo-centric historical framework. It is understandable in any attempt to find the roots of social institutions and ideological constructs that will inform the following centuries of the central Anatolian society that we call Hittite. However, the relevance of the Old Assyrian textual evidence must be briefly contextualized and its limits emphasized before fully considering the regional and interregional interactions involving Anatolia and their possible impact on the local sociolinguistic sphere.
Almost all the textual documentation on the KÄrum period derives from the cuneiform tablets discovered at the site of Kültepe, known as KaneÅ¡ in Assyrian, and NeÅ¡a in later Hittite sources (Fig. 4.1).1 This site includes a ca. 24ha-sized mound, hosting the local royal palace, and a lower settlement, called the kÄrum (port or trading post), where the Assyrian merchants resided. The private archives of the kÄrum yielded about 22,400 tablets, and forty additional tablets have been found on the mound. From this large corpus, we understand that the Old Assyrian trade network was an imposing infrastructure, involving a large part of central and eastern Anatolia. At the apex of the Old Assyrian trade, there were, besides KaneÅ¡, about other twenty major stations classified as kÄrÅ«m, as well as almost as many minor ones, known as wabartum. Some of these stations (e.g., HattuÅ¡, later HattuÅ¡a) have been explored archaeologically, yet the total textual evidence they produced, some hundred tablets, is dwarfed by the huge corpus found at Kültepe.
This concentration of most of the textual sources in a single center is coupled with a marked chronological unbalance. The vast majority of the Kültepe texts are from level II (ca. 1950â1836â¯BCE) of the kÄrum, while only about four hundred were found in the subsequent level, Ib (ca. 1833â1710? BCE). To the latter we may add most of the tablets found outside Kültepe. The latest kÄrum level (Ia; ca. 1710?â1685â¯BCE), which possibly stretched to the very beginning of the Hittite period (KulakoÄlu 2014), did not yield any textual evidence. Besides the stratigraphic distribution, the frequencies of attested dates, provided through the eponym (lÄ«mum) system in use in Assyrian chanceries, would indicate that most of the tablets were produced over a mere 40 to 50 years, corresponding to the first half of the 19th century BCE (Barjamovic et al. 2012:53â80, with references to additional literature).
In summary, available textual documentation for MBA Anatolia, despite relating to a vast area of central Anatolia, was mostly produced at a single site, Kaneš, during a very short time span. For linguistic purposes, the documents have further limitations in that they are codified in a language foreign to Anatolia, namely, the Old Assyrian dialect of Akkadian (hereafter: OA), and exclusively concern economic or legal matters. These factors are consequential for the vocabulary employed. Proper names, a few borrowings, and evidence for linguistic interference provide invaluable information on the linguistic substrata with which Assyrian merchants interacted. These data, however, can be hardly projected beyond Kaneš, or the Kızılırmak area at best.
Considering linguistic interactions as part of a broader set of cultural contacts allows us to introduce archaeological evidence into the picture. Our position in this respect, however, is just slightly better in terms of the spatiotemporal coverage of the evidence. Ironically, archaeological information is most abundant in central Anatolia, which is also the area more or less directly documented by the kÄrum texts. Important ancillary data also derive from Cilicia and the Konya plain, but entire patches of land, especially in the west, have been poorly explored if not ignored altogether relative to MBA frameworks.2
2 The Old Assyrian Merchants and Their Interactions with Anatolians
The Old Assyrian trade network in Anatolia was part of a large commercial enterprise financially supported by central institutions, namely, the palace and temples, as well as influential households residing in the Assyrian capital Aššur. The economic backbone of this organization is well known: Assyrians mainly exported tin and textiles to Anatolia, returning home with large volumes of silver and, to a lesser extent, gold (Fig. 4.1). Aššur functioned as a clearinghouse, insofar as neither of the two exported products was produced in the Assyrian homeland. Textiles were acquired from Babylonian merchants, and tin was likely imported to Assyria from the Iranian plateau, possibly in exchange for (part of) the silver and gold obtained in Anatolia. Therefore, unlike previous systems, such as those used in the Uruk and Ur III, the Old Assyrian trade was not aimed at channeling resources into a core area but was mainly a profit-oriented enterprise in which silver and gold functioned as proto-currencies that were (re)invested in one or the other market. Kings and temple institutions in Aššur could participate as investors in commercial activities and, in any case, extracted revenues from them through taxes imposed on the merchants. But the Assyrian trade can hardly be reduced to a state-sponsored initiative as it involved a variety of investors, including prominent citizens and households who seem to have pursued private interests.
Although the trading season only occupied the warmest part of the year, from late spring to early autumn, Assyrian merchants often resided in Anatolia all year long or even permanently, commissioning others to travel back and forth between AÅ¡Å¡ur and KaneÅ¡. The Assyrians in Anatolia, therefore, formed a socially coherent community of expats, conscious of its âothernessâ and retaining strong bonds with AÅ¡Å¡ur, always called âthe Cityâ (Älum). The main governmental institutions of the City were faithfully reproduced in the kÄrum. The merchants worshipped Assyrian gods and swore official oaths before the sacred dagger of the Assyrian supreme god, AÅ¡Å¡ur. Multiple texts attest to the presence in Anatolia of Assyrian cultic personnel assigned to temples dedicated to AÅ¡Å¡ur, IÅ¡tar, and other Assyrian deities (Highcock 2017, with references to additional literature). The use of Assyrian cuneiform as an essential means of communication required the establishment of scribal schools in the kÄrum.3
Although the merchants kept their âAssyrianessâ lively through practices, institutions, and religious beliefs, they were deeply integrated into Anatolian society. Although terms such as âcolony,â as a translation for kÄrum, and âOld Assyrian Colony periodâ are still widely used, the idea of a top-down imposition of Assyrian sovereignty over indigenous Anatolian communities is now unanimously discredited. The trade organization was based on peer-to-peer negotiations, among different trading stakeholders and between merchants and local rulers, wherein all parties acknowledged each other in search of mutual benefits. Relations were juridically regulated by treaties, whereby Anatolian rulers committed themselves to keeping routes safe in exchange for a share of trade profits that was extracted through taxes and tolls on incoming goods.
It is commonplace to say that without their cuneiform tablets, the Assyrians would be barely recognizable in the material record. The main commodities imported to Anatolia from Assyria, that is tin, and textiles, are no longer visible or preserved. The kÄrum hosted a substantial number of Anatolians together with Assyrians, yet all of the houses hitherto excavated at KaneÅ¡ as well as at other sites where Assyrians traders had a presence conform to Anatolian building traditions irrespective of the ethnolinguistic affiliation of their occupants.4 Also, the ceramics and other small finds belong to local types.
Old Assyrian language and script are the clearest evidence of an Assyrian presence at KaneÅ¡. These were chiefly used in communications among merchants. As we shall discuss later, some Anatolians were familiar with Old Assyrian cuneiform, and the number of Anatolians involved in record keeping steadily increased between KÄrum II and Ib.5 To the later period also belong a number of records written in Old Assyrian by local kings, including the famous letter sent by Anum-hirbe of Maâama to WarÅ¡ama of KaneÅ¡ (Balkan 1957) and the recently discovered letter written by WiuÅ¡ti of HattuÅ¡ (KBo 71.81). Despite this, the available evidence suggests that cuneiform remained a foreign feature that was never fully assimilated by the local population throughout the Old Assyrian period.6
Apart from the tablets themselves and some seal impressions (see below), very little that can be acknowledged as genuinely âAssyrianâ has been identified so far in artifact assemblages. In more general terms, the sphere of interactions between the foreign and indigenous groups has been conceptualized as a âmiddle groundâ on which respective identities were juxtaposed and renegotiated. As Lumsden explained, the Assyro-Anatolian middle ground is ânot a process of acculturation, of one culture becoming more like the other, but of a more nuanced form of encounter in the âin-betweenâ space of the middle ground, which results in something completely new.â7 A well-known textual example for this kind of cultural negotiation was an appeal made by the merchantâs guild for the release of a colleague (called, as usual, âa brotherâ), who was imprisoned by the royal couple of an unnamed Anatolian polity in relation to an affair of espionage.8 The rulers who were addressed were begged to let the poor man plead his innocence âbefore the sword of AÅ¡Å¡ur,â according to the Assyrian custom, or perform a river ordeal like a native (ana id lilÄ«k kÄ«ma DUMU Älika, literally, âto go to the river like one of your citizens [referring to the royal couple]â).9
The middle ground finds a precise material correlation in patterns of hybridization that are best exemplified in glyptic traditions. According to a long-held typological classification, MBA seals/impressions present in Anatolia are arranged in four groups or styles: Old Assyrian, Anatolian, Old Babylonian, and Old Syrian. The archives of the KaneÅ¡ kÄrum show a preponderance of the first two styles, which have often been equated with the ethnicity of their owners. The situation, however, is now understood to be more complex. Hybridized middle-ground styles, in which Anatolian motives were assembled in an Assyrian or Mesopotamian matrix or vice versa, have been identified. Like Anatolian-style seals, these were produced by local workshops and, as far as we can judge from the attested ownersâ names, they were used by both Assyrians and Anatolians.10
Middle-ground negotiations involving trade stakeholders and local authorities, as well as the hybridization of glyptic styles, belong to the public domain of commercial interactions. However, the prolonged stays of Assyrian merchants in Anatolia inevitably resulted in a more private form of cross-cultural integration, that is, interethnic marriages. Most commonly, Assyrian merchants contracted second marriages in Anatolia with indigenous women. Over time, as communities became more mixed and Assyrians a permanent presence, marriages between Anatolian men and women of Assyrian descent are also attested.11 The Old Assyrian marriage contract allowed bigamy, provided that the two wives did not enjoy the same status and did not live in the same place. As a rule, the first marriage granted the wife the status of aÅ¡Å¡Ätum, âmain wife,â while the second wife was called amtumâliterally, âfemale slave.â The distinction seems to have been a matter of temporal order, irrespective of ethnicity. Therefore, during the first generation, we mostly see Anatolian amtum wives as opposed to Assyrian aÅ¡Å¡atum, that is, the wives that the merchants had left in AÅ¡Å¡ur when moving to Anatolia. The opposite situation (Anatolian aÅ¡Å¡atum vs. Assyrian amtum) became more common during later generations.12
The seemingly derogatory term amtum derives from the Mesopotamian practice of acquiring female slaves to employ as surrogate mothers in case of anticipated childlessness. However, this is hardly a role that fit the Anatolian amtum, who were not slaves and seem to have enjoyed rights broadly comparable with those of aÅ¡Å¡Ätum wives. Heffron (2017) considers the amtum marriage as a form of middle ground negotiation between the trade diaspora and local communities seeking mutual advantages in close cross-cultural ties. The amtum-aÅ¡Å¡atum semantic shift is thus explained as a case of cross-cultural misunderstanding, whereby classifications compliant with the Assyrian marriage laws were reformulated and reshuffled into a new form acceptable to both parties in the mixed community abroad. This is possible if we observe that Anatolian women may have had a different, less degrading understanding of the slave-wife status than the Assyrians did. The evidence would suggest that marriages between free and unfree in central Anatolian common law entailed conditions not very dissimilar to those expected from fully free marriages. Purely Anatolian couples of the KÄrum period practiced a community of property in which wealth was equally split between the partners in case of divorce.13 According to the later Hittite Laws (§§â¯31 and 33), this rule also applied to cases of divorce between free men (Là EL-LUM) and slave women (GÃME).14
3 The Peoples and Languages of Anatolia during the Old Assyrian Period
From the description proposed in the previous paragraphs, it is evident that the type of society the kÄrum documents describe is a mixed one, with traces of a diachronic evolution that seems to have modified the relationship between the Assyrians and locals. However, what remains unclear and to some extent debated in trying to describe the cultural, social, and sociolinguistic strata of the population of Anatolia in the KÄrum era is the composition of the local populations with which the Assyrians merged. When, as in this case, the material culture does not provide solid hints for a fine-grained differentiation, the procedure most commonly used to attempt such an assessment is an analysis of the linguistic profile of the people mentioned in the texts. Exemplifying this process is Gernot Wilhelmâs influential article âHurrians in Kaneshâ (2008), in which, in the absence of other types of data, Hurrians are recognized based on the fact that they bore Hurrian names. Of course, this approach is not unproblematic. A traditional approach to reconstructing the cultural geography of the early phases of the Anatolian area that took into consideration its linguistic history would be based, at least in part, on speculation about the so-called Indo-European migrations. This, when combined with the archaeological evidence for the prehistorical age, could result in a dangerous attempt to match the main Indo-European and non-Indo-European components with given material cultures.15
Speculations on the original Indo-European culture, when they are pushed too far, tend to produce poor models, especially when one tries to use them to describe the roots of the situation attested in later historical times. While the common genealogical origin of the Indo-European languages is certain, the earliest phases of the separation of the individual languages from the Stammbaum are lost in the fogs of pre- and protohistory and, by the time the linguistic communities were settled into areas (e.g., Anatolia, Greece, Italy, Iran, and India, to mention some of the earliest ones), the coexistence and cohabitation with local(?) pre-Indo-European communities such as the Hattians in Anatolia, Minoans in the Aegean, Elymians in Sicily, Elamites in the West of Iran, and possibly the Indus Valley civilizations in northwest India) had been established for long enough to make it virtually impossible for us to distinguish between original Indo-European and non-Indo-European cultural components.
Liverani (1988:314) described general similarity in the historical contexts of the introduction of Indo-European linguistic (and demographic?) elements in a way that does not imply long-distance migrations and applies to other apparent cultural turn-overs (think, for instance, of the emergence of the Akkadian and Amorite elements in Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia or the West Semitic elements in the Levant during the Iron Age):
Quel che sembra comunque accettabile, nella ricerca di un collegamento [â¦] è che la crisi delle culture urbanizzate dellâAntico Bronzo, pur avvenuta per motivi di dinamica interna, abbia aperto [â¦] dei âvuotiâ demografici e politici, che sono stati occupati da genti contigue che per modo di vita e tipologia economica erano pronte e adatte a subentrare nello sfruttamento di certe risorse e di certe aree.16
In general, when dealing with the problem of describing the type of multiculturalism and multilingualism of the Anatolian region in the Middle Bronze Age, the most appropriate approach consists in working with the available evidence only, refraining from any attempts at reconstructing former non-documentable processes.
The virtual impossibility of distinguishing Indo-European from previous(?), indigenous(?) elements is also encountered in examining the historical corpora from the later and properly Hittite phase. In particular, Klinger (1996:4) pointed out the enormous importance of the Hattian component in the culture of the Hittite kingdom, which results in mixed and entangled social, cultural, and religious facies. Although, as previously stated, the historical processes that turned Old Assyrian Anatolia into the Old Hittite kingdom are still partly obscure, it is important to observe that the intense degree of multiculturalism that makes Late Bronze Age Hatti look like a melting pot of Luwian, Hattian, Hurrian, and Mesopotamian cultural features seems to be consistent with the similarly mixed situation that emerges from the Old Assyrian documents. In other words, the Hurrian and Luwian cultures and literature during the XV and early XIV century pre-imperial ages did not penetrate a consistent and monolithic âHittite Anatoliaâ but rather represented a new wave of multiculturality in an environment that was already the complex result of longue durée interferences.
The main pieces of evidence emerging from the large corpus of cuneiform economic and legal documents found in Kültepe that may help describe the Middle Bronze Age social and sociolinguistic situation are:
-
The existence of the designation nuwÄâum, which was employed by the Assyrians to indicate the local populations and may have related to the designation of a specific nisba;
-
Anatolian or otherwise âlocalâ anthroponyms and toponyms, some of them associated with people who owned archives;
-
Lexical items that allow for the identification of cultural and social features, including some that are directly or indirectly related to the local administration and polities;
-
Grammatical mistakes in texts composed by scribes who were not Akkadian speakers (especially in archives owned by or related to Anatolians, only a part of which, unfortunately, has been published).
The first point in the list is only indirectly a matter of linguistic analysis, and should, in our opinion, be approached from several angles. Assyrians referred to locals with the noun nuwÄâum. Goedegebuure (2008, based only in part on a hypothesis by Carruba 1992) proposed that the word was an Anatolian loan that referred to the Luwians (luwiya), suggesting Hurrian mediation to account for unexpected phonetic features such as the initial consonant (/n/ instead of /l/, which does not occur word-initially in Hurrian), and providing an insightful, albeit speculative, historical justification for this path of diffusion of the word. Goedegebuureâs proposal may be correct. While the cases of l/n alternation, already listed by Carruba 1992, are not many, it is not true that the phenomenon would be âawkwardâ (as claimed by Kloekhorst 2019:45), because it would depend on specific features of Hurrian phonotactics. As for the historical settings Goedegebuure (2008) does not claim the word was originally created in KaneÅ¡ to refer to local Luwian speakers (pace Kloekhorst 2019:45â46). Nonetheless, the hypothesis is far from being proved. If the word needs to be explained in terms of contact, instead, an alternative explanation may exist that could make the diffusion more linear. As the population of KaneÅ¡ was, in all likelihood, mostly Hittite, it is conceivable that the word luwiya- was employed in the area by the Hittites to refer to the west Anatolian âstrangersâ; this could relate to the existence of Western trading routes connected to the kÄrum system via the common gateway of PuruÅ¡handa.17 The Assyrians may therefore have borrowed the word and extended the use of this designation of foreigners to all local non-Assyrian peoples, including the Hittites themselves. A meaning of âstrangerââmore generic than âLuwianââfor the borrowed word would also better explain why in later phases, when the Anatolian model word was no longer recognized by the Hittites, the Hittite correspondence in the list MSL XII 206, 8f. is in fact dampupi-, which, with Soysal (2006:131), apparently had also the meaning âstranger, foreignerâ beside the standard one, which is normally given as âunskilled, untrainedâ. Both this and Goedegebuureâs solution, however, would fail to account for the large diffusion of the word nuwaâum outside of the Assyrian of Anatolia, which makes a local borrowing less likely. Therefore, one should certainly consider also the possibility that the word nuwaâum was merely an Assyrian onomatopoeic (if not etymologically Semitic, cf., e.g., Akkadian nawûm, âto become wildâ) designation of âstrangersâ, similar, in its origin and function, to the Greek designation for âbarbarsâ. All things considered, Kloekhorst (2019:46) is certainly right when he highlights that the word has no specific ethnolinguistic connotation.
Moving to the other points in the list above, Anatolian personal names, lexical loans, and morphological adaptations of non-Akkadian words were identified early in the study of Hittite. In the 1950s, just a few decades after Hittite was deciphered, Bilgiç (1954) examined these features in a long article that was a milestone in the study of the kÄrum texts. Bilgiç identified over 60 foreign words and 17 uncertain ones in Old Assyrian. In the following decades, these figures changed, and some of Bilgiçâs interpretations can be challenged, especially because of the mixed methodology he employed. He analyzed some words as Indo-European based on true Hittite or Luwian comparanda, but above other interpretations on reconstructa that must be approached with caution. For instance, the connection between the kamsu textile and the Latin camisia (Bilgiç 1954:71, mistakenly: camisa) is hardly credible. In other instances, words listed by Bilgiç appear to be almost certainly non-Assyrian but do not admit an Indo-European or Anatolian interpretation. As was highlighted in studies published in the decades that followed (cf. Dercksen 2007, with references), most non-Assyrian words that can be analyzed as Anatolian and Indo-European seem to be analyzable as Hittite, with only very few cases of Luwian loans. As will be discussed later in this chapter, the situation that emerges for personal names is comparable: there is a fairly large set of non-Assyrian names in the kÄrum onomasticon but within this set, the subgroup of Hittite names is large, whereas Luwian names are at best a small minority.
Borrowings on the lexical level and mixed onomastics hint at an area of intensive and stable contact but do not prove it. Lexical exchange is far from uncommon even between languages that are in loose or indirect contact with each other, and personal names do not necessarily reflect the synchronic cultural background of an area and demography. Luckily, however, other types of interference exist that are much more telling for the linguistic profile of the local population of Old Assyrian Anatolia (or, at least, for the linguistic profile of its scribes). Grammatical mistakes that may depend on interference occur in some documents, especially in those from archives that belonged to individuals who bore Anatolian names. Some of these errors, as will be discussed later, can be regarded as depending on the native language of the scribes, who must have been non-Assyrian and, in all likelihood, were Anatolians in an Indo-European sense.
3.1 Hittites in the KÄrum Period Society
As has been noted in earlier studies (Bilgiç 1954; Schwemer 2005/2006:221â224; Dercksen 2004, 2007; Michel 2011a), Hittite linguistic evidence is not negligible in the kÄrum documents. A very large number of Anatolian personal names (recently collected by Kloekhorst in his 2019 monograph) are undoubtedly Hittite. This scenario is hardly surprising given the geographical collocation of the Anatolian sites that returned the highest amount of Old Assyrian documentation: KaneÅ¡ (Kültepe) was located in the core area of the future Hittite kingdom (between the middle course of the Kızılırmak River and northern Cappadocia) and was one of the military targets in the narrative of Anittaâs military successes (see Chapter 5, §â¯2). Of course, one should keep in mind that the situation may have been different in the westernmost areas of the Old Assyrian network if they were inhabited by Luwians at this stageâhere, however, it is important to reiterate the need for caution in the discussion of reconstructed pre- and protohistorical scenarios.
The relationships between the Assyrian traders and the local population emerge clearly from the sources. As Veenhof (2008) and Michel (2014a; 2014b:115) pointed out, at the level of administration the traders paid taxes to the local authorities and Anatolian rulers of the cities that hosted the markets. Anatolian names, however, which are sometimes connected to specific archives owned by local families, indicate that indigenous people were parties involved in the economic and juridical transactions, although the role of the tamkÄrum trader was typically held by Assyrians (so that the indication, rather generic in Mesopotamia, referred to a specific social class of non-Anatolians in the kÄrum; cf. Dercksen 2004b:238). The central office of the bit kÄrim, which represented the AÅ¡Å¡ur offices and the Assyrian traders before the local authorities and supervised taxation and finances from the Assyrian side, was managed and manned, at least for the most part, by Assyrian officials. However, some institutions mentioned in the texts are referred to by terms that appear to be Hittite (or Anatolian) loanwords in the Akkadian of the kÄrum. A very well-known example is the still elusive noun tuzzinnum, which contains the rather typical morphological addition of the nasal suffix -nnum and was probably formed on the Hittite i-stem noun tuzzi, which consistently has the meaning âarmyâ in later texts from the archives of HattuÅ¡a. The exact meaning of the loan tuzzinnum in Old Assyrian is uncertain. Although earlier assumed to be the title of an official, it more likely designates a group of people and/or a type of estate or field or a type of civil or military service.18 Other examples include the name of a form, service, or duty, the arhalum, of uncertain but possibly Anatolian etymology (a connection with the Hittite irha-/arha-, âlimit, boundary,â is not unconceivable) and ubadinnum, âland grant (vel sim.),â possibly ultimately Luwian (see below §â¯3.2).19
Loanwords, however, are not limited to the names of institutions, and while some are easily traced back to a specific substrate, others are more difficult to analyze (cf. also below §â¯3.4.1). As for grammatical interference, a similar issue arises: while some grammatical mistakes in the kÄrum texts look like the results of non-native command of the Akkadian language, establishing the native linguistic profile of the scribes who made them is no simple task, so a discussion of this aspect will be also made below (§â¯4.1), after having introduced other local cultural and linguistic strata that interacted with the superimposed Mesopotamian one.
3.2 Non-Hittite Anatolians: Luwians and the People of Pala
Although KaneÅ¡, which is the most reliable and significant object of analysis for the KÄrum period, should be regarded as a Hittite (or rather Nesic) principality and town, other Anatolian elements are attested in the cuneiform documentation. As for the direct attestations, we may cautiously limit ourselves to Anatolian lexical items that entered the administrative lexicon of the âcolonies.â Two such items, targumannum and ubadinnum, were adapted from Luwian beyond any reasonable doubt (see Simon 2020e for an updated and thorough discussion). Targumannum has long been recognized (Starke 1993) as meaning âinterpreterâ or âtranslatorâ and deriving from the Luwian verb tarkummiya- (attested in KUB 35.107). The Iron Age professional title tarkumami- was a participle of the verb or possibly a reanalyzed form that was the result of a circular loan from Akkadian. Ubadinnum, was a type of royal grant issued on behalf of the local Anatolian court.20 These Anatolian lexical traces, while small in number, testify to the involvement of the Luwian cultural component in the redefinition of society during the Old Assyrian phase. Therefore, Kloekhorstâs (2019) observation of the overwhelming presence of Hittite onomastics in KaneÅ¡ and the absence of clearly Luwian personal names must, if correctâbut see the discussion belowâbe interpreted as the reflex of a local situation of the Cappadocian city whose name the Hittites adopted for their vernacular (neÅ¡ili). This, however, does not change the fact that cultural and linguistic superposition, adstrata, and interferences had been at work for a long time in the Anatolian society in which the Assyrians planted the seed of their trading network. Furthermore, as was detailed by Giusfredi (2020b), Kloekhorst (2019) overemphasized the way the Hittite onomastic material outnumbers the Luwian forms in the KaneÅ¡ data by rejecting some pieces of evidence presented, for instance, by Yakubovich (2010:211â¯ff.). While it is true that the Hittite forms are overwhelmingly more numerous than the Luwian ones, as extensively discussed and argued in Giusfredi (2020b), we maintain that most of the ones formerly recognized as Luwian should be still analyzed as such, and the minor phonographic inconsistencies do not undernine the solidity of the matches.
According to the interpretation proposed in Giusfredi (2020b), there are only three names, among those that were described as Luwian thalleged Luwian names from KaneÅ¡ that do present serious issues. The first is Kulzia (ku-ul-zi-a): if the Luwian word gulz- were obliterated following Waalâs (2014) proposal to interpret the former gulz/Å¡- words as logographic GUL-writings, this name would probably be erased from the list of the Luwian OA anthroponyms.21 The second is Punamuwatti- (pu-na-mu-a-ti). In this case, Kloekhorst (2019:60) states that the -ati suffix is unexplained. However, nothing in the text that contains it, WAG 48â1464, indicates that the figure was male; if Punamuwatti- was a womanâs name, it could have been identical to the Hieroglyphic Luwian Panamuwatti- (BOYBEYPINARI 1&2 §§â¯1, 9, 17, 19; on the alternation Pana°/Puna° in some Iron Age names, cf. Giusfredi and Pisaniello 2020), or at least comparable to female names ending in -atti- (e.g., BONUS-ti- in KarkemiÅ¡, Panamuwattis, possibly Tuwa-FEMINA-ti in BOR 7).22 The third problematic name is the much-debated mu-a-na-ni, the name of a woman, which, if analyzed as a Luwian compound, seems to contain the noun nani- (brother). Two explanations proposed so far (Yakubovich 2010:18; Zehnder 2010:36) are: 1) nani- was still a gender-independent designation and the natural feminine nanaÅ¡ri- was a later formation, or 2) the compound was semantically exocentric and meant something like âhaving a powerful brother.â However, it is possible to propose a simpler explanation. The sequence na-ni in the Old Assyrian graphemics may have also been used to notate the Luwian nanniya- (master, lord, mistress, or lady), which was gender-indifferent until the full Iron Age when it is still used as an attribute to the female goddess Kubaba (e.g., KARKEMIÅ A18e §â¯6; A23 §â¯3). The name, normalized as Muwananni-, would pose no formal problems.23 All in all, Luwian names did exist in KaneÅ¡. They were far less common than Hittite names in the corpus but not almost absent as argued by Kloekhorst argues.
As for the other non-Hittite Anatolian element, the Palaic, the data from the Old Assyrian period are virtually non-existent. Palaic words or names in the corpus may have gone unrecognized because of the lack of unquestionably recognizable morphs and because the Palaic homeland was located in the north, in a very peripheral position with respect to the core area of the Assyrian network as we know it today. A few exceptions exist and have been pointed out by Goedegebuure (2008:170â171). The first is a possible case of phonological interference, consisting of the use of the WAa and WUu signs to render fricative labial consonants in loans. The second example of a possible contact-induced shift in Palaic that may have depended on Hattian was proposed by Goedegebuure: the presence of the assimilation of the nasal element /n/ to /m/ before a labial stop. A third possible example of alleged interference between Hattian and Palaic does not pertain to phonetics but rather dwells in the more delicate field of morphosyntax. It involves the existence of a clitic contrastive marker, -pi (BI), which exists in Hattian and also in Palaic.24 The other languages of the Anatolian branch have different markers: -(m)a) in Hittite and -pa in Luwian.25 All of these hypotheses relate to changes that would have occurred in the Old Assyrian age but are based on later data. They will be discussed in Chapter 12 (§â¯2.1).
The limited number of Palaic texts and the virtual absence of Palaic material in the texts from the Old Assyrian phase prevent any further investigation. The role of Palaic remained extremely modest and peripheral even during the centuries in which the main archives of the Hittite kingdom were active, which might indicate that the significance of the culture of Pala in the Anatolian melting pot was moderate and isolated compared with the influence of Hittite and Luwian.
3.3 Non-Anatolian Groups: Hattians and Hurrians
Besides the Anatolian material, and excluding the significant number of personal names that currently cannot be ascribed to a known linguistic tradition, a few anthroponyms found in Old Assyrian in Anatolia can be analyzed as belonging to the two main non-Anatolian vernaculars we have identified: Hurrian and Hattian. Hurrian names are not numerous in the texts published so far (Wilhelm 2008; Kloekhorst 2019:65), but some exist. It may thus be interesting to consider the role of Hurrians in the society of the kÄrumâfor instance, the case of Nanip-LUGAL in TC I 33 (translation by F. Giusfredi):
[Thus speaks Aš]šur-Ṭab: say [to Niw]arhšušar, Kani, Mannum-balum-Aššur, and Innaya: (concerning) my tablet, open the container and retrieve the tablet about the half mina of silver and the debt interest of Kani, son of Nanip-LUGAL. Give Kani the tablet, then seal (again) the container and entrust it to Niwarhšušar.
An observation is in order. Some names are easily recognizable as Hurrian but others may be difficult to recognize. For example, Kani, the son of Nanip-LUGAL, may have had a Hurrian name, too, but there are no obvious ways to prove that his name is also Hurrian. This means that the Hurrian presence in kÄrum society may have been stronger than we would think if we considered only clearly recognizable Hurrian morphs. The integration of Hurrian people would not be surprising. The number of Hurrians involved in the kÄrum economy cannot be accurately measured, however, and they may have been little more than a significant minority, even in the southeastern part of the network of which KaneÅ¡ was one of the main gateways. Furthermore, given the strong cultural and territorial contiguity of the Assyrian world and the North Mesopotamian core area of the Hurrian civilization, it is very difficult to establish whether the presence of Hurrians was due to a previous settlement in the area or, as seems far more likely, they arrived with the Assyrians, following the trading network. Nor are very many definitively Hattian names attested, already identified by Garelli (1963). But even limiting oneself to the names that present a decent Hattian morphology (e.g., the -il final morpheme, regularly rendered with the sign IL5 in the local syllabary), the examples show a full involvement of the Hattian people in the economy. In TC III 97, Mr. Kazhanuil (kà -az-ha-nu-il5) is in charge of carrying and possibly guarding 10 minas of fine copper; in TC III 158 Mr. Kitukail (ki-tù3-kà 3-il5) carries fine clothes. As is also the case with Hurrian, some Hattian names may be unrecognizable based on our current formal knowledge of the language. A Hattian-sounding Mr. AniÅ¡kipil (a-ni-iÅ¡-ki-pi-il5) is the father of Mr. [A?]naraniki ([a]-na-ra-ni-ki) in TC III 191, 33, and the name of the latter does not strike us as recognizably Hattian. Of course, a father with a Hattian name might have had a son with a non-Hattian name for many reasons: multiple onomastics existed in many interface areas of antiquity, and the linguistic profile of one parent might have prevailed in mixed families. It is impossible to exclude the possibility that Hattian names are more numerous in the corpus than we can recognize.
Our ability to safely identify both the Hurrian and the Hattian anthroponyms in the Old Assyrian corpus is seriously limited. This is only partly due to our incomplete knowledge of both languages. The Old Assyrian simplified and graphemically approximative syllabary is a poor system for writing even the peripheral variety of Akkadian employed at the kÄrum; when phonetic and morphological adaptations of foreign names come into play, even segments from well-known languages (such as Luwian) may be difficult to identify.
3.4 Phenomena of Language Interference during the Old Assyrian Phase
Onomastics may point to the linguistic pedigree of families within a group but does so in a rather indirect fashion. From the personal names in KaneÅ¡, we learn that many non-Akkadian individuals connected to the kÄrum were Hittites; Luwians, Hattians, and Hurrians also existed but seem to have been a minority. The Old Assyrian corpus, however, can provide further data on the relationships between the different groups. Furthermore, speculations have been made in the literature about possible cases of interference between local languages and groups that go well beyond the level of immediate interactions that can be spotted in the Assyrian texts. It is necessary to evaluate the data and hypotheses to weigh such general interpretations.
3.4.1 Lexical Interference
Interference between languages can be divided into two main categories: lexical interference and grammatical interference. The intensity of each type may depend on several factors, mostly the degree of compenetration of the groups of speakers within a mixed society and the functional efficiency and prestige of each language. Lexical interference from the local languages or other minority languages is attested in the Old Assyrian corpus and is not limited to documents coming from archives owned by Anatolian or otherwise non-Akkadian people.
Loanwords are generally easy to identify despite the suboptimal graphemics of the Old Assyrian cuneiform, which does not mark double consonants.26 Adaptation often involved the addition of a nominal morpheme -Vnn- to the theme of the model word. For instance, the Hittite tuzzi- produced tuzzinnum (a group of people and possibly a type of estate),27 and the Luwian ubadi- produced ubadinnum (a type of service or estate).28 This theme extension may have originated inside Anatolian (Marazzi 2010) or could have been an Akkadian phenomenon (Giusfredi 2020a). Other idiosyncrasies involved the rendering of vowels, in particular the transformation of graphic [a] in [u] in interconsonantal contextsâfor example, the Hittite haluga- (message) > Old Assyrian hulugannum (generally analyzed as Hittite, but possibly Luwian according to Vernet Pons 2014) or the Hittite iÅ¡paruzzi- (beam or bar) > Old Assyrian ispuruzzinnum; these, however, may reflect Hittite-internal phenomena as hypothesized by Kloekhorst (2008; cf. also Dercksen 2007) and by Simon (2020d, who prefers to see an /a/ : /o/ allophony).
As emerges quite clearly from the previous scholarship,29 the majority of the admittedly few assured loanwords seem to come from Hittite.30 Hittite loans are mostly words for realia or otherwise concrete terms, with tuzzinnum being a partial exception. Another alleged âabstractâ term, ishiulanu, has been shown to mean not âtreatyâ but âbeltâ (Simon 2015), thus reducing the number of abstract administrative terms to the sole case of tuzzinnum.31
Luwian loans are rare but include the designation of the âinterpreter,â targumannu (from the tarkummi- âturnâ), and the aforementioned ubadinnu, both referring to social categories rather than objects or commodities. The number of Hurrian words is similarly limited, with unuÅ¡Å¡u (obligation) being at least dubious and based on a remote comparison to Alalah and Ugarit Hurrian.32 The title alahhinnu (âoverseer,â vel sim., based on our research representing almost two thirds of the occurrences of alleged Hurrian loans in the corpus, with abstract alahhinnutum indicating an office assigned by the local prince in NeÅr. C1; Veenhof 1989:518), the Å¡inahilum (another title with abstract Å¡inahilutum, also assigned by the prince), and uruzannu (feminine in the only clear occurrence in CT III 131, a type of table) remain the few assured cases however, as these terms also occurs in other Akkadian corpora of the Middle Bronze Age and of later phases,33 and since Hurrians and Assyrians both originated from Northern Mesopotamia where they co-existed for a long time, the innovation must not necessarily have occurred in the Anatolian kÄrum-society.
3.4.2 Grammatical Interference
Besides loans, cases of grammatical interference have been identified, generally in archives that belonged or probably belonged to Anatolians. These have been studied by Dercksen (2007) and Michel (2011a) and, along with some uncertainties with the use of cuneiform, include the mistaken use of grammatical gender in nouns and verbs, as well as the use of Hittite morphological endings in Akkadian context.
Mistaken gender within nominal phrases usually involves the use of the wrong possessive pronoun as in the following example:
TC III 214aÅ aÅ¡alika (wife of Ni-ki-li-et) ⦠aÅ¡ar libbi=Å¡u (expected: libbi=Å¡a) illakâÅ aÅ¡alika [â¦] may go where (s)he wantsâ
Here the expected form of the feminine possessive is replaced by the masculine. Confusion in the use of Akkadian pronominal elements continued to exist in the later cuneiform production of the Hittite royal archives, so this type of mistake is not exclusively attested in the Old Assyrian production. However, it is quite likely that in both scenarios non-native command of Akkadian by the scribes played a role.
As for mistaken gender marking on the verbal inflection, a good example is the following, already offered by Michel (2011a):
Kt c/k 1637, 6â13Tepulka u Å uppianika DUMU.MUNUSâ¨â¨.MEÅ â©â©34Kunuwan izuzzÅ«=ma (expected: tazuzzÄ) bÄtam rebÄtam Å uppianika ilqe (expected: talqe) bÄtam Å¡aniam Tepulka talqeâTepulka and Å uppianika, daughter(s) of Kunuwan, share (the inherited estate): Å uppianika took the house (in/with) the square, Tepulka took the other houseâ35
Here, not only the masculine is used for the feminine, but this happens in two of the three inflected verbs, with the third being correctly inflected as a feminine third-person singular preterite. Ms. Tepulka is treated as a masculine complement with respect to the verb zâzu and a feminine complement with respect to the verb leqû, indicating that the scribe was confusing the forms rather than the referents. As neither Luwian nor Hittite distinguish between masculine and feminine and both lack gender marking on the verb, there seems to be no reason to doubt that the etiology of the mistake was the use of Akkadian as an imperfectly mastered second language.36 Other mistakes, such as the omission of conjunctions or the confusion of singular or plural, are not specific to the linguistic identity of the author of the texts and may be attributed to second-language competence only when they occur in tablets that belonged with certainty to Anatolian archives.37
The other type of morphological interference, thoroughly discussed by Kloekorst (2019:50â53, with extensive references), is repredented by the use of Anatolian grammatical ending attached to personal names. The examples presented by Kloekhorst are quite compelling and include direct cases but also genitives (KIÅ IB tù-ut-hi-li-áš âseal of Tuthaliyaâ) and datives (a-na la-ka-ni âto Lakaniâ) employed in fitting morphosyntactic positions. More debatable is the problem of alleged grammatical endings attached to unclear foreign words (Kloekhorst 2019:52â53): since the forms have no etymology, it is impossible to establish whether the final part corresponded, indeed, to a Hittite inflectional ending.
3.5 Middle Bronze Age Central Anatolia as a Scenario of Interference between Local Languages
The mixed onomastics and interference phenomena that emerge in the Old Assyrian corpus indicate a situation in which local speakers of Anatolian languages (and possibly to a minor extent, Hattians and Hurrians) were integrated into the kÄrum society. Linguistic interference involving Assyrian is not, however, the only type of interference that we can reconstruct, even though Assyrian and Assyrian-related evidence play a crucial role in the age under discussion. Indeed, in an inspired 2008 paper, Goedegebuure hypothesized that the linguistic typology of Hattian and some hints deriving from Middle Bronze Age toponomastics point to the existence of a mixed society involving sociolinguistic interference between Hattian and an Indo-European language before the penetration of the Assyrian element. The crucial early toponomastic data are the early thematization of the Hattian toponym HattuÅ¡ as HattuÅ¡a in the Mari letter M.8426+9046 (Klinger 1996:88 and Ziegler 1996:480)38 and the presence of the (probably) Anatolian toponym A(m)kuwa instead of the Hattian Hanikka (Klinger 1996:190â191).
It would be much too daring to call this type of evidence conclusive, but it certainly does point to a scenario of wide contacts. However, the superposition of Indo-European languages and Hattian, with a substrate-superstrate scenario, is not proven by these data. Interaction in interface areas is sufficient to produce vernacular adaptations, resulting in multiple competing designations for given towns or cities.
Structurally, Goedegebuure (2008) identified a number of typological peculiarities of Hattian that do not follow the standard implicational universals, which would be the result of a shift induced in Hattian by intensive contacts with an Indo-European population. Most of these features involve the syntactic typology of the language, which is generally reconstructed as VO, but contains a number of patterns that accord instead with an OV language. As the model is based on the Hattian texts from the Hittite archives, it will be discussed in Chapter 9. For the purposes of the present chapter, it suffices to say that if the analysis is correct, it points to a phase of cultural and linguistic contact that would correspond roughly to the Middle Bronze Age.
A further case of contact between Hattian and the Indo-European languages of Anatolia, which would have taken place very early and has reflexes in the onomastics of the Old Assyrian corpus, may be represented by the -Å¡ara compounds of Hittite (and the equivalent -aÅ¡ri compounds of Luwian) building a natural gender morph that did not become a grammatical category.39 If induced as a calque on the agglutinative Hattian morphological minimal pairs of the type katte (king): kattah (queen), peculiar compounds such as the Hittite haÅ¡Å¡uÅ¡ara- âqueenâ (from haÅ¡Å¡u âkingâ) and the Luwian nanaÅ¡ri- âsisterâ (from nana- âbrotherâ) would have been generated before the kÄrum because the morphs are already present in the KaneÅ¡ corpus of personal names (Kloekhorst 2019:54â57). Therefore, even if a precise identification of the specific Anatolian language that was in contact with Hattian will not be attempted here (Goedegebuure makes a case for Luwian, or Proto-Luwian, but Palaic is also a reasonable candidate, and Hittite is not out of the question either), and no precise substrate-superstrate relationship can be described for such an early and opaque historical period,40 there is no reason to refuse the sensible idea that different linguistic and cultural components were in contact in Anatolia during a pre- and protohistorical phase.
Before the cultural colonization of Anatolia by the Assyrians, central Anatolia appears to have been inhabited by populations with different languages that were probably involved in complex sociolinguistic interactions. However, a more fine-grained description of the mechanics of the superposition (if any) of the Indo-European and non-Indo-European components can only be speculative. That the Hattians and Anatolians were in a hierarchic relationship with respect to social, economic, and/ or linguistic prestige is very possible, but the exact roles are not easily reconstructible and one cannot exclude the possibility that different equilibria were reached in different areas of central Anatolia. The limited quantity of Hattian loans in Hittite in the Late Bronze Age may indicate that Hattian did not lend many lexical elements, which is typical of a substratum, but the possible extension of typological features from Hittite to Hattian speaks against a higher prestige for Hittite, as this is a trait typical of substrata. In sum, the aporetic aspects of these problems may have resulted from the involvement of non-Hittite Anatolian groups in the protohistorical contacts, which would make the evidence from Late Bronze Age Hatti an unsuitable heuristic tool for the earlier phases of the Middle Bronze Age.
In the Old Assyrian age proper, the kÄrum society was certainly mixed and complex, with different cultures and languages coexisting and orbiting around the Assyrian-driven trade economy. The trade involved Hittites and Luwians, as well as a minority of Hattians and possibly some Hurrians. The apparent dominance of Hittite onomastic elements over the other three recognizable components is certainly due to the geographical collocation of KaneÅ¡; in other areas of the trading network, the weight of the demographic components may have been different. To better support this diversified scenario, it is now necessary to describe the context of the Assyrian network in terms of historical geography.
4 The Geography and Scope of Old Assyrian Trade
The kÄrum and wabartum making up the Old Assyrian network were all associated with indigenous urban centers whose names, in most cases, broadly correspond to toponyms attested in later Hittite texts. Despite ongoing debates on individual localizations, the comparison between the two geographic corpora permits a fair reconstruction of the scope of the Old Assyrian trade (Fig. 4.1). The caravans started from AÅ¡Å¡ur and made a long journey to reach the Euphrates at Hahhu. Thence they proceeded to KaneÅ¡ across the Antitaurus in the MaraÅ-Elbistan area. KaneÅ¡ served as the hub for caravans departing on several routes that led across Anatolia in an area extending from the Taurus to the Pontus and the Black Sea, and from the Phrygian highlands to the northern Konya plain.41
As mentioned above, investments in tin and textiles imported from Mesopotamia to KaneÅ¡ produced a return in silver and gold that was eventually shipped to AÅ¡Å¡ur. But that constituted only the main trunk of a complex endeavor that involved intermediate local circuits focusing on other commodities and models of exchange (Fig. 4.1). A key node in the Anatolian network north and west of KaneÅ¡ was the kÄrum of Durhumit (the Hittite Durmitta), a regional market where specialized Assyrian firms traded large quantities of tin, wool, and textiles in exchange for copper. It has been argued that Durhumit was a major hub for the collection of copper shipments from a network that controlled the copper-rich ores of the Pontic area.
Figure 4.1
Map of MBA Anatolia, with the main trajectories of Old Assyrian trade (dashed line) and key places mentioned in the text
Suggested localizations for Durhumit/Durmitta range across the whole Kızılırmak bend, from the eastern sector (between Sivas and the upper Delice basin), to the north (between Zile and Merzifon), and from the southwest (at or around Büklükale in Kırıkkale province) to the northwest (the mid-lower Kızılırmak around Ãankırı).42 The last proposal seems the most reasonable on account of the arguments recently advanced by KryszeÅ (2016:343â387). In this geographic collocation (Fig. 4.1), the role of Durhumit/Durmitta as an important gateway for the Old Assyrian copper trade, and later for Hittite engagements with the KaÅ¡ka and the northwestern peripheries, makes much more sense. The Ãankırı area, in fact, is connected to the east and southeast through the Ãorum and Delice Ãay basins and the north, west, and south through the Ãankırı and Kızılırmak valleys.
The copper trade fuelled by the kÄrum of Durhumit did not have an endpoint in the Assyrian market itself as the copper purchased was immediately reinvested in other Anatolian circuits to increase bargaining power over the silver trade.43 The main target of the copper circuit was the city and kÄrum of PuruÅ¡hattum (in Hittite, PuruÅ¡handa, ParÅ¡uhanda, or ParaÅ¡hunta). This centre was long identified with Acemhöyük (Fig. 4.1), an excavated site in Cappadocia that yielded the vestiges of a prosperous MBA settlement that was intensively frequented by Assyrian merchants and entertained contacts with Old Syrian centers.44 In recent years, however, Barjamovic advocated a more westerly localization that would seem more attractive or at least closer to a realistic scenario (Barjamovic 2011:357â378).45 Barjamovic also argued that PuruÅ¡hattum was an interstitial market of the Old Assyrian trade, lying at the juncture of multiple systems of exchange. In fact, transactions attested in PuruÅ¡hattum suggest that this city was responsible for the inflow in Assyrian markets of huge quantities of silver and gold acquired from a network beyond the reach of Old Assyrian merchants. In exchange, the Assyrians could allow imports of equally large amounts of copper acquired in Durhumit into PuruÅ¡hattum and allied networks. This evidence, in addition to fluctuations in prices conducive to a market economy of investment and profit, suggests that PuruÅ¡hattum was, like AÅ¡Å¡ur, a gateway of commerce straddling multiple exchange networks (Barjamovic 2011:372â375). It seems clear, therefore, that KaneÅ¡, Durhumit, and PuruÅ¡hattum represented nodes in a sort of tripartite system that was meant to support the Old Assyrian network in Anatolia and in turn connect it with other circuits of exchange.
This organization of the Old Assyrian trade seems to have changed in the last phase documented by Old Assyrian sources, which corresponds to the KÄrum Ib level at KaneÅ¡.46 Exchange during this period seems to have increasingly focused on local circuits in copper and wool, with a more limited inflow of tin and textile from Assyria. Likely related to this development was the growing number of Assyrians residing permanently in Anatolia (waÅ¡bÅ«tum). At this stage, they became a group of their own, distinct from the Assyrians involved in the overland trade. Based on textual attestations of toponyms, scholars have also argued for a general contraction of the KÄrum Ib network, especially its western branches. The relative paucity of KÄrum Ib records, compared with those available for the previous generation, and the growing number of toponym attestations in this period, including a mention of PuruÅ¡hattum (Kt 90/k 359), suggest caution against too pessimistic interpretations, which might be biased by the scattered nature of the findings. The apparent marginalization of western nodes can nonetheless be contrasted with the increasing importance of the Kızılırmak area and the eastern branches of the Old Assyrian trade (e.g., in Maâama, in northern Syria). This is perhaps linked with the coeval expansion of Syrian markets, chiefly Mari, which could have created new opportunities in this direction.
4.1 The Significance of Purušhattum in the Political and Cultural Landscape of Second Millennium Anatolia
In addition to its prominent role in the Old Assyrian commercial landscape, PuruÅ¡hattum/PuruÅ¡handa held a special place in the political and cultural map of second-millennium BCE Anatolia. The kÄrum of PuruÅ¡hattum likely responded to a different taxation system as to those applying to KaneÅ¡ and the other karÅ« of the Kızılırmak area, and texts also seem to refer to separate metrological standards.47 This might indicate that PuruÅ¡hattum participated in a socioeconomic network largely independently of the core area of the Old Assyrian network.
Politically, PuruÅ¡hattum is notably the only center known to have been ruled by a âgreat kingâ (rubaâum rabium) during the KÄrum II period. This would suggest that PuruÅ¡hattum enjoyed a hegemonic status at an early stage. A reduction of Assyrian activity at PuruÅ¡hattum during KÄrum Ib would be indicated by the poor representation of this city in the Kültepe texts dating to this period, in which it is mentioned only once. This does not mean that the city ceased to exist, nor that it lost its political independence. According to the Anitta Text, composed during the Hittite period but relating to events of the KÄrum Ib period (CTH 1), Anitta met a âMan of PuruÅ¡handaâ (Là URUPuruÅ¡handa; ii 73â79) after carving out a vast domain across central Anatolia, based at KaneÅ¡.48 Despite Anittaâs initial aggressive approach, there is no explicit mention of a war between him and the PuruÅ¡handean. Instead, the latter presented Anitta with royal insigna (an iron scepter and an iron throne), an act that most scholars interpret as a spontaneous submission.49 Drawing on parallels with coeval Mesopotamian alliance protocols, Dercksen (2010) suggests on the contrary that the Man of PuruÅ¡handa presented gifts to Anitta as a ruler of equal rank.50 If so, the Anitta Text would attest to a balanced competition between KaneÅ¡ and PuruÅ¡hattum/PuruÅ¡handa during KÄrum Ib.
We do not know what happened during the documentary gap of KÄrum Ia, but PuruÅ¡handa would resurface again in Hittite texts referring to the Old Kingdom, at times as a prominent subordinate client or as a rival of the Hittite kings residing in HattuÅ¡a. By the late 16th century BCE, PuruÅ¡handa was definitively integrated into the Hittite kingdom as part of the storehouse system established by Telipinu in his edict and, about, one century later became part of the Lower Land province.51
The political prestige of PuruÅ¡handa is even projected back to the late third millennium by the epic of the King of Battle (Å¡ar tamhÄri), which depicts the king of PuruÅ¡handa Nur-dahhi as the main opponent of Sargon of Akkad. According to this account, Sargon mounted a far-reaching campaign against the Anatolian city to avenge the mistreatment meted out to Akkadian merchants who had been dispatched there (Goodnick Westenholz 1997:102â139; Archi 2000). The text of the Å¡ar tamhÄri is preserved in several versions, the oldest of which, in Hittite (CTH 310), was likely composed no earlier than the 15th century BCE.52 No reflection of a campaign in central Anatolia is preserved in Old Akkadian records (2350â2200â¯BCE). Another Sargonic legend reported in an OA text from Kültepe involves several Anatolian toponyms, including KaneÅ¡ and Hattum, but contains no reference to PuruÅ¡hattum.53 Scholars generally agree that the Å¡ar tamhÄri was a fictional story, in which various traditions were pulled together and readapted in a composition vaguely inspired by the commercial realities of late-third and early second-millennium BCE Anatolia (Chapter 3).54 It has been noted that the Hittite version of the Å¡ar tamhÄri, like all the others, seems to sympathize with Sargon, showing no âAnatolianâ solidarity for the PuruÅ¡handean.55 This is not surprising in light of the fact that Sargon represented a model in Old Hittite ideologies of kingship. The Å¡ar tamhÄri can thus be envisioned as a literary expedient composed and manipulated to represent the Anatolian tensions and conflicts of the early second millennium BCE.56
Based on the LBA evidence on the Lower Land, we can assume that Luwian was the dominant language spoken in the territory of PuruÅ¡hattum/PuruÅ¡handa during the second millennium BCE. Yakubovich (2010:245â247) and, especially, Forlanini (2017b:136) even interpret the kingdom and territory of PuruÅ¡handa as a forerunner of Luwiya, attested in a few paragraphs of the OH versions of the Hittite Laws vis-à -vis the land of Hatti (Laws §§â¯5:19â21, 23; Chapter 5, §â¯3). In this regard, we should bear in mind that in the OA and Hittite texts, PuruÅ¡hattum/PuruÅ¡handa had a very specific meaning, chiefly denoting a kÄrum or a political/administrative division relating to the eponymous center and its territorial domain (however large it was at any point in time). In contrast, Luwiya was a vaguer geographical reference in the only text where it is found, i.e., the Hittite Laws (Chapter 5, §â¯3).
There are a few OA attestations in which PuruÅ¡hattum seems to play a role akin to Luwiya, appearing in contrastive juxtaposition with Hattum in formulaic expressions like âbe it in Hattum or PuruÅ¡hattumâ (lu ina Hatim lu ina BuruÅ¡hatim). Barjamovic (2011:157) takes them to reflect a general bipartition in the âmental mapâ of central Anatolia and lists a total of five occurrences of this expression.57 This evidence per se is quite narrow, but the parallelism proposed between Hattum-PuruÅ¡hattum, on the one hand, and Hatti-Luwiya, on the other, is far from compelling in any case.58 The pair Hatti-Luwiya has its vantage point in one of the two elements (i.e., Hatti) and thus reflects an inside (Hatti)âoutside (Luwiya) separation between two regions (Chapter 5, §â¯3). Conversely, the pair Hattum-PuruÅ¡hattum in OA sources always refers to an unnamed third point in between, namely KaneÅ¡. The impression is that Hattum and PuruÅ¡hattum defined not two separate regions but rather two opposite poles of a geographic continuum, as a shorthand for the whole extent of the Old Assyrian network that gravitated around KaneÅ¡.
At this juncture, some observations on the toponym Hattum are in order to better contextualize the opposition with Purušhattum. They will also shed light on the possible origins and semantic shifts of the name that would be later used to denominate the core region of the Hittite domain (KUR URUHATTI) and would become the root of the Hittite designation for the Hattian language ((URU)hattili-).
4.2 Hattum and Hattuš
In OA sources Hattum consistently appears in contexts suggesting that it was a geographic region rather than a city;59 neither an Älum nor kÄrum named after Hattum is ever attested. This would be at odds with the Old Assyrian custom of referring to the lands (mÄtÅ«) involved in the Anatolian network by the name of a major seat of the local ruler and/or of a commercial station (e.g., mÄt WahÅ¡uÅ¡ana; mÄt PuruÅ¡hattim, etc.). In all likelihood, Hattum is etymologically related to Hatti, the later core territory of the Hittite domain that occupied the Kızılırmak basin.60 The correspondence seems to work, at least in part, from a geographical perspective too. The OA evidence would place Hattum to the north of KaneÅ¡, excluding KaneÅ¡, WahÅ¡uÅ¡ana, WaÅ¡haniya, and PuruÅ¡hattum from its south and western limits. The eastern and northern limits of Hattum are more elusive and, therefore, subject to differing scholarly interpretations. Nashef (1976) considered that Hattum included the later hometown of Anitta and HattuÅ¡ili I, KuÅ¡Å¡ar, but the evidence in this regard is debatable and derived from a single text.61 Be that as it may, Hattum was certainly distinct from Luhuzattiya, Hurama, Tegarama, and the other stations east of KaneÅ¡.62 This would further constrain Hattum within broadly the same geographic region later occupied by Hatti, that is, within the bend of the Kızılırmak River (Fig. 4.1).
A core issue concerns the political status of Hattum during the KÄrum periodâin particular, its relationships with HattuÅ¡. Lewy (1950) considered the two geographical entities to be mere synonyms for the city and land, thus projecting back to the KÄrum period the equation of Hatti with HattuÅ¡a that informed Hittite geographic conceptions.63 Landsberger (1950aâb) instead contended that HattuÅ¡ was only the city and Hattum indicated a larger regional unit. Finally, Dercksen (2001:59) interpreted Hattum in a narrower sense as an equivalent of the otherwise unattested expression *mÄt HattuÅ¡. If any one-to-one association between HattuÅ¡ and Hattum existed, as a city-territory dichotomy or synonymic pair, one would expect a closer match between the respective regional interactions attested in OA sources. Yet the analysis carried out by Barjamovic shows very little correlation. HattuÅ¡ participated in a local cluster, featuring as a main partner Å inahuttum. This city, however, never appears in the Hattum cluster of commercial relationships.64 Conversely, major centers such as WahÅ¡uÅ¡ana and Hurama figure prominently in relationship to Hattum, but do not appear in the HattuÅ¡ cluster.65
We should also refrain from anachronistically retrojecting a hegemonic role that HattuÅ¡(a) did not acquire until later stages in its history. Based on the few available references, HattuÅ¡ does not seem to have been a particularly prominent political player beyond its area during the early phase of the Old Assyrian trade (KÄrum II).66 In this period, HattuÅ¡ was only one among many other city-states in the Kızılırmak area. Independent local rulers are attested at Tawiniya, Amkuwa, and Å inahuttum, all situated quite close to HattuÅ¡. Perhaps HattuÅ¡ increased its influence later, during KÄrum Ib, as might be suggested by Anittaâs insistence on the conflict with the local king PiuÅ¡ti, the destruction of HattuÅ¡, and the curse placed on the city. In the Anitta Text, known to us as a Hittite composition, PiuÅ¡ti is styled as âking of Hatti/HattuÅ¡aâ (LUGAL URUHATTI), as usual in the Hittite form of the title. However, in the newly discovered OA letter KBo 71.78, this same king, if identical with WiuÅ¡ti, claims kingship in HattuÅ¡ (r[ubaâum] Å¡a! HattuÅ¡), not in Hattum, which is consistent with the known Old Assyrian political landscape.67
The overall impression is that the place-name Hattum did not have a specific geopolitical meaning but rather indicated a vaguer geographic region composed of multiple territorial realities, including HattuÅ¡ and other city-states of the Kızılırmak bend. This is also supported by the association between Hattum and loose expressions like libbi mÄtim âheartlandâ that seems to emerge from some OA sources.68 As mentioned above (§ 4.1), when contrasted with PuruÅ¡hattum, Hattum was a shorthand for the northeastern pole of the kÄrum network. Yet Hattum had also a very distinct place within the Old Assyrian mental map, especially when contrasted with the land of KaneÅ¡. Symbolically, Hattum and KaneÅ¡ appear one after the other among the entities confronted by Sargon of Akkad in the OA Sargonic legend Kt j/k 97.69 A factual distinction between them is found in the well-known judicial statement Kt 87/k 275 that prohibits the selling of a female slave in the city and land of KaneÅ¡ but not in Hattum or the mÄtum (Å¡umma ana Hattim lÅ« ana mÄtim).70 A sort of ideal division is thus made between (the land of) KaneÅ¡ and Hattum, and both are separated from âthe land,â which refers here to the rest of Anatolia.71 In conclusion, Hattum was not a political entity on its own but was nonetheless a geographical reference in the Old Assyrian mental map of Anatolia, acquiring different meanings depending on the context. More specifically, it indicated a general region within the Kızılırmak bend as distinct from KaneÅ¡ and the rest of Anatolia.
This is at least the likely perception that foreign Assyrian merchants had of Hattum in their dictionary of the Anatolian space. In trying to define Hattum from an emic Anatolian perspective, however, we face a different set of considerations. Assyrians tended to readapt local place-names to their own language and script, and these mostly reappeared in later Hittite sources as variants that were only slightly different (e.g., Amkuwa/Ankuwa, Šinahuttum/Šanahuitta, etc.). There is no reason to doubt that the name Hattum also originated from local Anatolian designations. KryszeŠ(2017:219) proposed that it was derived from a stem, *hat(t)-, which would be shared by at least two other toponyms within the same area, Hattuš and Hatten. The same stem also recurs in the Hittite designation of the Hattian language, hattili-, and the Akkadian form HATTI, whether directly derived from OA Hattum or not. Since any specific political meaning is excluded for Hattum, it is possible that this term derived from an ethnonym employed by Anatolians in the early second millennium BCE, presumably with reference to the Hattians.
To be sure, this should not be interpreted too strictly from a linguistic point of view. There is no implication that all of Hattum was inhabited by Hattians, nor that Hattian speakers constituted the totality or even the majority of the population of Hattum in the early second millennium BCE. Significantly, a town already attested in OA sources that was probably situated not far from HattuÅ¡a bore a good Hittite name: Å uppiluliya. Am/nkuwa was also located in Hattum and held an important role in Hattian cultic milieus. Yet the very name of the city most employed in both OA and Hittite sources is a Hittite version of the Hattian toponym Hanikka. A long list of inhabitants of Amkuwa, reported in an OA letter from AliÅar Höyük (OIP 27, 49a+b), includes several names of Hittite etymology such as Å uppunuman and Å uppunahÅ¡u. The region of Hattum, therefore, appears as a mixed Hittite-Hattian linguistic context quite early in the second millennium BCE and certainly before the rise of the Hittite kingdom. In this light, Hattum might only be intended as the âland of the Hattiansâ in a broader sense, that is, as a region where Hattian was a recognizable feature of the local cultural and linguistic landscape.
5 The Late KÄrum Period and the Anitta Text (CTHÂ 1)
The bulk of the Old Assyrian sources relate to the KÄrum II period, roughly corresponding to the late 20th and 19th century BCE. Based on the eponym lists, the destruction of KÄrum II at KaneÅ¡ can be situated around 1830â¯BCE.72 A documentary hiatus of about a decade followed, perhaps due to a temporary retreat of Assyrian merchants from the colony, together with their archives.73 During the subsequent KÄrum Ib period, the KaneÅ¡ colony was resettled and the Assyrian archives became active again, although far less so than before. Notwithstanding their small number (about 500), the KÄrum Ib texts offer some rare glimpses into Anatolian historical facts, sometimes with a specificity unseen in the previous period. In particular, for the first time, several KaneÅ¡ean kings and their highest officers come to be known by name. These details have been gleaned most often from notarization formulas in legal transactions, the so-called iqqÄti documents.74 Through comparison with other available sources, these attestations allow the reconstruction of a dynastic sequence that is likely complete for the KÄrum Ib period at KaneÅ¡: Hurmeli (?), Harpatiwa, Inar, WarÅ¡ama (Inarâs son), Pithana, Anitta (Pithanaâs son), and Zuzu.
An important historical source for the KÄrum Ib period is the famous letter sent by Anum-hirbe of Maâama to King WarÅ¡ama of KaneÅ¡, written in Old Assyrian cuneiform and found in the so-called WarÅ¡ama palace on the Kültepe mound.75 This text relates to a diplomatic crisis between the two kings that was triggered by one of WarÅ¡amaâs vassals, the ruler of TaiÅ¡ama. This personage is accused of having promoted unlawful alliances and raided Maâamaâs territory, taking advantage of Anum-hirbeâs temporary weakness after a recent defeat. TaiÅ¡amaâs behavior is compared by antithesis to that of Anum-hirbeâs vassal state Å ibuha, which never harmed KaneÅ¡. The political geography reflected by this situation was radically different from that which was portrayed in the previous generation of OA sources. During the KÄrum II period Assyrian merchants mostly moved in a landscape of small city-states that occasionally formed loose coalitions, whereas Anum-hirbeâs letter reveals a system of larger hegemonic formations that projected their power over one or more client states.76 This process of territorial integration is somehow mirrored in coeval Mesopotamia by the more ambitious expansionistic projects attempted by Å amÅ¡i-Addu in the north and, later, Hammurapi and his successors in Babylonia. In the case of Maâama and KaneÅ¡ the scale was certainly smaller, but still impressive relative to the Anatolian scenario. At Mari and in later Hittite historical legends, the same Anum-hirbe is attested as the king of both Zalwar and HaÅ¡Å¡u. This information, in addition to a much later mention of Anum-hirbeâs monument on Mount Atalur that was reported in the annals of Salmanassar III, argue that Anum-hirbeâs domain should be localized in the Antitaurus area, between the Kara Su River valley and modern MaraÅ (Fig. 4.1).77 If so, regardless of the positions of TaiÅ¡ama and Å ibuha, which cannot be ascertained, the hegemonic spheres of Maâama and KaneÅ¡ must have been quite large, perhaps encompassing on one side or the other such major centers as Å alahÅ¡uwa or Luhuzattiya.78 Incidentally, Anum-hirbe also informs us of an earlier war conducted by WarÅ¡amaâs father Inar against the land of HarÅ¡amna, which probably lay at a short distance from KaneÅ¡.79 Anum-hirbe and his deeds had a later echo in Hittite scribal circles, as Hittite historical legends mentioning this king in connection with the cities of Zalwar and HaÅ¡Å¡u are preserved in a few fragmentary tablets (CTH 2).80
The most important historical source about the KÄrum Ib period is preserved in a Hittite account of military deeds (CTH 1) that is told in the first person by Anitta, son of Pithana.81 According to this text, Anitta and Pithana, natives of the city of KuÅ¡Å¡ar, conquered KaneÅ¡ (spelled NeÅ¡a), and Pithana sat on its throne after overturning the local ruler. After succeeding his father, Anitta used KaneÅ¡ as a power base to launch military campaigns over a vast area that comprised the Kızılırmak bend and the territory of Zalpuwa, on the Black Sea. After prevailing over the latter, Anitta took its king, Huzziya, to KaneÅ¡ as a hostage, together with a statue of the KaneÅ¡ean Sun god, that a former king of Zalpuwa named Uhna had abducted as booty. Within the Kızıl Irmak bend, a major rival defeated by Anitta was PiuÅ¡ti, the king of HattuÅ¡a (LUGAL URUHATTI). HattuÅ¡a was taken by night, destroyed, cursed, and made symbolically unproductive by sowing weeds on its terrain. In a second phase of expansion, Anitta, now claiming the status of âgreat kingâ (LUGAL GAL), concentrated his efforts on the western side of the Kızılırmak, finding strong opposition from the âMan (LÃ) of Å alatiwara.â This ruler eventually crossed the river Hulanna and unsuccessfully besieged KaneÅ¡. A brief excursus on Anittaâs building and hunting activities is inserted in the account of these events. Finally, Anitta turned to PuruÅ¡handa, whose ruler is presented again as a âMan.â This time, however, the conflict was resolved peacefully, as the Man of PuruÅ¡handa acknowledged Anittaâs power and became his ally.82
The Anitta Text would thus convey the memory of an attempt at constructing a hegemonic polity in central Anatolia at a point predating the expansion of Hattušili I. The composition is preserved in several manuscripts composed in Hittite during the Hittite period (KBo 3.22, OH/OS, is the oldest), but it likely reflects, at least in part, authentic accounts dating back to the Old Assyrian period. Indeed, were it a tradition invented from scratch for the sake of Hittite propaganda, it would be unclear how to fit it with the extant evidence.83 Clear analogies might have sparked the interest of Hittite governing elites in transmitting the Anitta text: both Anitta and the founder of the Hittite kingdom, Hattušili I, were from Kuššar and founded successful regimes elsewhere. Departures, however, are equally evident and can hardly be reconciled with Hittite ideological narratives. The passage on the curse of Hattuša, already present in the OH/OS manuscript, is the clearest example: what is the political gist of it for a Hittite subject, considering that Hattuša was the Hittite capital from Hattušili I on? Hattušili I not only founded his kingdom in the city that Anitta had destroyed and cursed but proudly took his name from it, imitated by at least one successor (Hattušili III).
The historicity of Anitta and his father Pithana as pre-Hittite Anatolian rulers is confirmed by independent evidence, as are some individual details of the Anitta Text. A sequence of two kings named Pithana and Anitta is attested at KaneÅ¡ during the KÄrum Ib period. Related sources include a series of iqqÄti documents, some drawn up under the supervision of Pithana and/or Anitta, and a bronze spearhead marked as belonging to âthe palace of Anitta, kingâ (Ã.GAL mA-ni-ta ru-ba-im). Other iqqÄti documents attest Anittaâs kingship at Amkuwa, confirming his hegemonic rule over more than one urban center of the Kızılırmak area.84 In one of these documents (OIP 27 49a/b), Anitta bears the OA title of âgreat kingâ (rubaâum rabûm), that matches the title LUGAL GAL that he claimed in his text (KBo 3.22 obv. 41).
A rubaâum named WiuÅ¡ti, likely identical with the PiuÅ¡ti mentioned in the Anitta Text, ruled at HattuÅ¡ during the KÄrum Ib period as is attested by the OA letter KBo 71.81.85 This letter was found in a storage room of an administrative building located in the kÄrum quarter of BoÄazköy-HattuÅ¡a. The eponym date of another OA document found nearby (KBo 71.95) provides a terminus post quem for the destruction layer sealing this building of 1748â¯BCE,86 which is compatible with the supposed date of Anittaâs destruction of HattuÅ¡a (ca. 1730â¯BCE).87 In sum, there are no reasons to be too skeptical about the historicity of the political scenario depicted in the Anitta Text.
The question remains of how the memory of Anittaâs deeds reached the Hittite court and was then transmitted during the Hittite period. The Anitta Text appears to be a compilation that drew on multiple sources. A boundary between at least two different original archetypes is found in KBo 3.22 obv. 33â35, in which Anitta concludes an account of the wars against NeÅ¡a, Zalpuwa, HattuÅ¡a, and other localities with this statement:
These words [â¦] from a tablet at my gate. In the future may no one destroy this tablet. Whoever destroys it, let him be an enemy of NeÅ¡a
Since this formula would be out of place in the middle of a coherent composition, it is generally interpreted as the concluding paragraph of a separate inscription dedicated by Anitta himself, presumably on the gate of his palace or a city gate at KaneÅ¡. Most scholars, therefore, maintain that this was an original inscription of Anitta that was later blended with another account of his exploits (ll. 36â79) to form the Anitta Text as we know it.88 As others propose, however, the Anitta Text might have had a more complex redactional history, originating from the combination and further manipulation of three or possibly even more original sources.89
Closely connected with the issue of transmission is the question of the language in which the Anitta Text was originally composed, which is part of a broader debate over the early stages of Hittite literacy. Apart from very few outliers in forms of Akkadian possibly linked with Syrian or other Mesopotamian circles (see below), all known records of the KÄrum period were produced using the OA script and language. Old Assyrian was not only used by both Assyrian and Anatolian merchants but also was the official language of Anatolian chanceries, as exemplified by the iqqÄti documents and letters treated above. Therefore, most scholars assume that the inscription âof the gateâ referred to in ll. 33â35 and the other source(s) conflated in the Anitta Text, were first recorded in Old Assyrian Akkadian and then translated into Hittite.90 The later step would have occurred sometime during the Hittite period, that is, the time when the earliest known records written in Hittite were composed.
This appears to be the most reasonable scenario, judging from the evidence available so far. Although not conclusive, some positive evidence in the narrative suggests a phase of elaboration of the text within an Akkadian scribal environment.91 The emphasis on building activities and the motif of the hunting king was not part of the usual Hittite apologetic repertoire, at least until the Late Empire period, but better matches Mesopotamian traditions.92 To this observation, one may add Dercksenâs (2010) proposed comparison between the gift presentation made by the Man of PuruÅ¡handa and diplomatic protocols in use in Middle Bronze Age Syria and Mesopotamia. A linkage with OA sources is suggested more directly by the geography of Anittaâs actions, which relates to a map of Anatolia probably more familiar to Old Assyrian merchants than Hittite scribes. Å alatiwara, in particular, was a prominent node in the Old Assyrian network and well attested in the related corpus (cf. OA Å alatuwar). By contrast, this toponym is almost absent in the Hittite corpus, and the few attestations outside the Anitta Text are also suspected to stem from a knowledge of Old Assyrian compositions.93 These texts and other sporadic sources, including the Anum-hirbe legends mentioned above, prove that Hittite scribes had an access to Old Assyrian material, perhaps including narratives of Anittaâs deeds.94
In his edition of the Anitta Text, Neu (1974) rejected the hypothesis of a translation from Old Assyrian sources, finding no sign of interference with Old Assyrian in the vocabulary and grammar of the text. He argued therefore that Anitta had the account of his deeds written directly in Hittite, that is, neÅ¡ili, the native language of the inhabitants of KaneÅ¡. Considering the lack of secure traces of record keeping in Hittite before HattuÅ¡ili I, Neuâs reconstruction did not receive wide acceptance. In a recent article, Kloekhorst and Waal (2019) discuss a group of âcushion-shapedâ tablets written in Hittite, including the earliest known witness of the Anitta Text (KBo 3.22; OH/OS), arguing that they were composed outside HattuÅ¡a, before the Hittite Old Kingdom. Although this is theoretically possible, there is no fundament in the suggestion of the two authors that these tablets date to the KÄrum Ib period.95 More realistically, we can suppose that Hittite narrative styles and forms, after reaching a mature stage, influenced the translation of the Anitta Text to the point of masking any legacy of Old Assyrian. Moreover, it is theoretically possible, although not provable, that, during the transmission of the Anitta Text, OA material concerning Anitta was knitted together with other sources written (or orally transmitted?) in other languages. This would have introduced further distancing from the language of any original sources.
The last king known at KaneÅ¡ is Zuzu, estimated to have succeeded Anitta around 1725â¯BCE and ruled until the end of the 18th century.96 The last dated text from Kültepe was produced around 1710â¯BCE. Sometime after this date the settlement of KÄrum Ib came to an end for unclear reasons. During the following occupation phase, KÄrum Ia, which may have lasted until the rise of the early Hittite kingdom, Kültepe was much reduced in size and did not yield any texts. After this phase, the settlement was abandoned until the Iron Age, perhaps due to permanent flooding caused by a rise in the water table.97 Elsewhereâat Acemhöyük and Konya-Karahöyükâthe last KÄrum-period settlements were violently destroyed sometime during the 18th century. This would signal an intensification of political competition and warfare that would accord well with Anittaâs account. As mentioned above, the KÄrum-period settlement of HattuÅ¡(a) was also destroyed around 1730â¯BCE, likely due to Anittaâs conquest. Giving credit to Anittaâs claims to have cursed the city and banned resettlement, scholars have long assumed that HattuÅ¡(a) was abandoned for some generations after its destruction. Recent investigations, however, reveal that the kÄrum area was immediately resettled, albeit in a more haphazard fashion, in the so-called Zwischenphase, radiocarbon dated after 1720â¯BCE.98
6 Non-Old Assyrian Commercial Networks
As already stressed (§ 1), the textual evidence does not permit tracking sociocultural developments in a pan-Anatolian perspective as the kÄrum network only occupied the eastern and central part of the peninsula. However, it is clear that the Assyrians were not alone in the commercial landscape of the Near East but part of a wider system of interlocking networks that connected central Asia with southeastern Europe.99 In this context, AÅ¡Å¡ur was just one among several hotspots in Near Eastern trade, others being in Lower Mesopotamia (Sippar), the middle Euphrates (Mari and KarkemiÅ¡), the Levant (Ebla, Aleppo, and Ugarit), and the Aegean (Minoan Crete). Likewise, there is reason to think that several interacting circuits or commercial spheres operated within Anatolia (Fig. 4.2).
Figure 4.2
Old Assyrian and other main competing commercial spheres argued in the text
Available textual evidence for non-Old Assyrian trading activities in Anatolia is scanty but probably represents the tip of the iceberg of a larger corpus now lost or still buried in undiscovered archives. Some OA texts inform us about contacts with Ebla, whose merchants were involved in the Anatolian copper trade.100 In addition, an interesting small group of texts from KaneÅ¡ displays linguistic and paleographical features foreign to OA traditions, which can be linked to non-Assyrian scribal environments in north Syria and Upper Mesopotamia.101 Within this outlier group, the letter Kt k/k 4, sent by a certain Ehli-Addu to an Unap-Å eâboth Hurrian namesâconcerns affairs taking place in Tunip (northern Levant), and closes with a list of âwitnesses of the city of HaÅ¡Å¡uâ (Å¡ibÅ« Å¡a Älim HaÅ¡Å¡i), located in the vicinity of MaraÅ or Gaziantep.102 Neither Tunip nor HaÅ¡Å¡u were involved in the Old Assyrian trade. Finally, an oft-cited OA text warns an Anatolian ruler against dealing with âAkkadianââthat is, Babylonianâmerchants,103 whose likely presence in Anatolia is attested by the diffusion of Old Babylonian-style seals and impressions.104
Relations between Mari and Anatolia are also documented.105 The Mari letter T.135 attests exchanges with PuruÅ¡hattum during the reign of Yahdun-Lim, contemporary with the KÄrum II period at KaneÅ¡, and, probably somewhat later, a sealing belonging to a daughter of Yahdun-Lim reached the Sarıkaya palace at Acemhöyük.106 Contacts continued during the reign of Å amÅ¡i-Addu, a period when the activities of the Old Assyrian caravan enterprises are poorly documented. Several sealings of this king or his officials feature in the Sarıkaya archives at Acemhöyük and lie at the core of ongoing debates on Bronze Age chronology.
A key port of entry into Anatolia from the Middle Euphrates and the Jazira was the city and kingdom of KarkemiÅ¡ (Gaziantep province). The best documented king of KarkemiÅ¡ during the MBA is Aplahanda, who sent sealed goods to the palace of Acemhöyük. Control of western trading routes via KarkemiÅ¡ likely was a main motivation for the expansionist policies of Å amÅ¡i-Addu, who subjugated Aplahanda, perhaps together with the countries of HaÅ¡Å¡u and UrÅ¡u, and tried to establish diplomatic relationships with Zalwar, generally identified with Tilmen Höyük in the Amanus region (Fig. 4.1).107 After the death of Å amÅ¡i-Addu, when the Old Assyrian trade restarted in KÄrum Ib, Aplahanda regained his independence in KarkemiÅ¡, as did Zimri-Lim in Mari. In this period, a trade-oriented partnership between Mari and KarkemiÅ¡ thrived. The respective chanceries corresponded on commercial matters, including shipments of goods from KaneÅ¡, HattuÅ¡, and even as far west as Å alatuwar. However, some records unveil Mariâs efforts to establish a direct commercial link to Anatolia that would bypass KarkemiÅ¡.108 These attempts entailed engaging in direct competition with Assyrian merchants or, alternatively, seeking their complicity. Some Mari letters bear witness to a proposal for a marriage alliance that was advanced by an Assyrian merchant residing at KaneÅ¡ and addressed to the chief of Mariote merchants, Iddin-NumuÅ¡da, alias Iddiyatum.109
These few hints concur with the OA sources in depicting the involvement of Anatolia in a diverse landscape of competing commercial agencies that operated across partially overlapping spheres of interest. Compared with the directional caravan trade documented by the OA sources, the little information available on Syrian enterprises seems to reflect more flexible and indirect patterns of trade that relied on the mediation of multiple, independent interstitial markets. The OA ban on Babylonian merchants mentioned above, as well as similar attested territorial restrictions,110 have been used to argue that relationships between the different networks responded to mercantilistic logic and were aimed at the creation of areal monopolies.111 Nonetheless, the fact that limitations had to be imposed through specific regulations may suggest that the markets involved in these circuits had normal aspirations to attract an array of firms aiming to increase demand. This would be conducive to the development of permeable boundaries between different circuitsâa situation that, for example, is apparent in the strong spatial overlap and stylistic interpenetration of the Anatolian, Old Assyrian, Old Babylonian and Old Syrian glyptic styles.112
Archaeological evidence complements textual sources in suggesting multiple intersecting channels of exchange between Anatolia, Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Aegean, which unfolded in part along trajectories already established in the EBA.113 Notwithstanding differing historic-geographic views, scholars agree that the Old Assyrian network only marginally touched upon areas south of the Tuz Gölü and did not extend west beyond the Sakarya river basin. Significantly, this areal extent bypassed several regions known for their relevance in interregional connectivity throughout the Bronze Age. The most striking case is Cilicia, which was a well-known natural passage and had been one of the main gateways in overland connections between central Anatolia and the Levant since early prehistory.114 Convincing evidence points to Cilician involvement in one or more non-Assyrian networks. As mentioned above, Zalwar/Tilmen Höyük, at the eastern entrance of Cilicia, was a key node in commercial and political interactions with Mesopotamia and the northern Levant. Tending to confirm this picture are the Old Syrian-style sealings with inscriptions in OB ductus that have been found on this site, seemingly attached to exchanged goods.115 Tilmen lay close to the Amanian Gates (nowadays the Bahçe Pass) that gave access to Plain Cilicia and controlled traffic in this direction. In Cilicia, MBA evidence from Sirkeli comprises a number of finds testifying to contacts with northwest Syrian centers, as well as an imposing upper- and lower-town complex that was comparable in size to the citadel and kÄrum compounds found at Old Assyrian trading posts.116 Cylinder seals conforming to MBA northwest Syrian traditions have been found at Tatarlı Höyük,117 and Tarsus has yielded an Old Babylonian seal.118
The clearest testimony of a material-cultural convergence between Cilicia and its eastern neighbors during the MBA is represented by the so-called Syro-Cilician, or Amuq-Cilician, ware. Named after its main distribution and production area, which straddled the Amanus Mountains, this is a class of both wheel- and handmade ceramics characterized by distinctive matte-painted decorations that include geometric, floral, or zoomorphic motifs.119 While this ware was found in Mesopotamia and through the Levant down to Egypt, it is the main diagnostic feature of MBA ceramic traditions in Plain Cilicia.120
Cilicia was well connected with central Anatolia through a circuit that interlocked with the Old Assyrian network. Stamp seals and impressions following native central Anatolian traditions featured at Sirkeli and Tilmen Höyük and found their way to Ebla and Tell Biâa in Syria.121 Crescent-shaped loom weights, typically used for weaving in central Anatolia, were also common in Cilicia.122 Additionally, this region might have acted as a channel for the diffusion of Old Syrian- and Old Babylonian glyptic traditions to the north and west.123 Syro-Cilician ware imports crossed the Taurus, reaching the Central Plateau.124
Due to its central position and rich settlement history, the Konya Plain must have been another major area of interaction during the MBA.125 This region was only marginally involved in the Assyrian trade through the wabartum of Uš(š)a, which is, however, poorly attested in OA sources.126 The published archaeological record for the MBA in the Konya Plains, almost exclusively limited to the glyptic corpus excavated at Konya-Karahöyük, offers some supplementary material.127 According to Barjamovic (2019:75), the main commercial partner of the inhabitants of the Konya Plain could have been Ebla, a hypothesis supported by the finding of several Old Syrian-style cylinder seals and impressions at Konya-Karahöyük. If so, the Konya Plain would have been closely tied with Cilicia, possibly along trajectories of contact developed in the EBA (Chapter 3).
Western Anatolia was also involved in exchange circuits that interacted at various levels with the Old Assyrian and other networks. Use of Aegean weighting systems is documented at Kültepe and further south and east, at Ebla and in Upper Mesopotamia. This would point to a local adaptation or acquaintance and close interactions with western mercantile practices, likely through both maritime and overland routes.128 Archaeological evidence for the early second millennium in the whole region west of the Kızılırmak bend is scattered and problematic. Coupled with the almost complete lack of relevant textual information, this situation allows for only a vague assessment of possible trajectories of contact in the area.129 Sandwiched as it is between two major catalysts of scholarly attentions, namely, the proto-Hittite and Minoan core regions, western Anatolia has not been seen until recently as a subject in its own right as far as the second millennium is concerned. It is symptomatic of this state of the art that only a few sites have been excavated and even fewer fully published, and that the great majority are located in the coastal areas under strong Aegean influence. The major excavation carried out in the 1950s at Beycesultan, in the upper Meander, was chiefly aimed at investigating Arzawa, a composite political entity best known as a rival of the Hittite kingdom. Comparatively little has been published and little is known about the second millennium BCE in the inland intermediate areas of western Anatolia.130
Chronological uncertainties further contribute to the general fuzziness, interfering with attempts to correlate materials from different sites in broader regional and supraregional perspectives. The two stratigraphic pillars for the second millennium sequence, Troy and Beycesultan, are located some 500â¯km apart and belong to distinct cultural horizons. At Troy, the MBA has long been a sort of phantom, squeezed between settlements VI and VII, which are assigned to the LBA, and settlement V, which is often considered an appendix to the cultural developments of the EBA. Recent chronological reassessments, however, squarely bracket Troy V between the 20th and the mid-18th centuries BCE, that is, within a span broadly parallel to KÄrum II to Ib in central Anatolia.131
In the large, two-mounded site of Beycesultan, early excavations by Seton Lloyd and James Mellaart exposed two levels (VâIV) assigned to the MBA chiefly through relative dating and associations with historical events.132 The main feature of level V is the Burnt Palace, an imposing building with an area of over 4.5â¯km2 and multiple rooms organized around a main courtyard. After the violent destruction of this building, the area was occupied by squatters in level IV. Mellaart associates this transition with the conflict between HattuÅ¡ili I and Arzawa that he dates to 1750â¯BCE following the now abandoned High Chronology. The next level, III, featuring another institutional edifice, the Little Palace, was dated to the LBA (15thâ13th centuries BCE), primarily based on the finding of a fragment of a Mycenaean LH IIIA/B stirrup jar, âembedded in a platform of Late Beycesultan III date.â133 Various scholars argued for an earlier dating of Beycesultan level III considering some ceramic similarities with KÄrum Ib âOld Hittiteâ traditions from central Anatolia.134 The excavations restarted in 2007 under the direction of EÅref Abay produced a revised stratigraphic sequence supported by absolute radiometric dates that confirm this early date or perhaps argue for an even earlier dating.135 In this updated framework, the MBA occupation(s) at Beycesultan includes levels V, IV, and III, covering the 19th to the late 18th century BCE.136 The single Mycenaean sherd is hardly significant in the face of the recent more solid evidence: it should probably be interpreted as an intrusion from later layers. Based on comparisons with Troy V, Beycesultan levels VII to VI likely date from the early MBA, around the 20th century BCE.137
Notwithstanding stratigraphic shifts, the cultural frameworks in Troy V developed without major breaks from the local traditions of the late third millennium BCE (Troy IV). Red Cross Bowls, a class of carinated bowls so-called for their distinctive decoration, constitute the only remarkable innovation, and provide an interesting anchor point for connections with Anatolian contexts farther east.138 Close comparanda for this ceramic class are found from northwest Anatolia to the Kızılırmak bend, including Kültepe (KÄrum IVâIII) and southeastern Anatolia. However, while Red Cross Bowls are found throughout the MBA sequence at Troy, elsewhere this ceramic is conspicuously limited to early MBA or transitional EBAâMBA contexts. Particularly close matches are found in Cilicia, specifically in Mersin XIb, Tarsus EBA IIIâMBA Transitional, and Kilise Tepe Vf-e.139 At Beycesultan Red Cross Bowls are abundant in levels VII to VI but absent in later MBA deposits.140 This pattern seems to indicate that, early in the second millennium BCE, contacts with western Anatolia continued along overland routes broadly consistent with the Great Caravan Route evidenced for the EBA III (see Chapter 3), having a main axis between Cilicia and the Troad. The later retreat of Red Cross Bowls traditions within Troy V might indicate a shift toward other trajectories during subsequent phases of the MBA, but the locations of those hypothetical trajectories remain undetermined.
KÄrum-style and early LBA traditions would find a northwestern limit at Gordion, where MBA layers have been investigated in test pits under Megaron 10 and 12 and the so-called Hittite Cemetery.141 Many have also pointed to an influence of KÄrum-style traditions in the ceramic production of Beycesultan V to IV, allegedly manifested in pitchers with pronounced beak spouts, basket-handled jars, trefoil jugs, teapots, and carinated bowls.142 Mellaart insists that these shared traits have a common areal heritage in EBA III wheel-made pottery horizons rather than developing out of synchronic interregional contacts.143 However, closerâif still tenuousâinteractions with central Anatolia are unanimously identified in Beycesultan III assemblages and are now understood to reflect the late MBA phases on the site.144
The complex architectural layout of the institutional buildings uncovered at Beycesultan levels V to III, with their annexed storage facilities, points to a centralized socioeconomic organization not dissimilar from those observed at Kültepe and other kÄrum sites. Likewise, the participation of the MBA Beycesultan community in commercial activities probably was a catalyst for the wealth accumulation necessary to sustain this complex organization. Cultural influences associated with Beycesultan MBA horizons traveled along the Meander and Hermos valleys (e.g., Aphrodisias), reaching the coast at Miletus, Liman Tepe, and Panaztepe.145 Here the overland routes met maritime networks, chiefly signaled by Minoan(-style) artifacts.
The sites of Miletus, ÃeÅme-BaÄlarası, and Iasos of Caria likely hosted Minoan settlements, and Minoan imports feature in all of the MBA assemblages along the Aegean coast from Knidos to Troy.146 No trace of direct Minoan influx has yet been found further inland. However, Aegean trade with central Anatolia, albeit mediated by interstitial markets, is evidenced by the distribution of Aegean weighting systems that was mentioned above. At this juncture, it is also worth mentioning a single Anatolian-style stamp seal impression found in an MBA deposit at Phaistos in Crete that has close comparanda at Konya-Karahöyük.147
For the 19th to 17th centuries BCE, cuneiform sources from Mari, Alalah, and Babylon bear the earliest textual evidence for the overseas exportation of metals, chiefly copper, from Cyprus (ancient Alašiya).148 Significantly, these references concur with the archaeological record to show an increasing involvement of Cyprus in Near Eastern trading networks during the MBA. Exotica imported or showing influences from the Levant, Egypt, and Anatolia increased during this period on the island, reciprocated by a widespread distribution of Cypriot exports, chiefly ceramics, across the eastern Mediterranean.149 This exchange was accompanied by a boost in metal production on Cyprus, likely in response to external demand.150
In Anatolia Middle Cypriot White Painted IIIâIV vessels have been recovered in a KÄrum Ib context at Kültepe and at another unspecified location in the Kayseri region. In contrast with later periods, no MBA Cypriot influx is found in Cilicia, barring a single White Painted IIIâIV style sherd from an unclear chronological context at Sirkeli Höyük. Therefore, Cypriot contacts probably reached central Anatolia through Syrian mediation and then spread overland across the Antitaurus.151 One way or another, the availability of Cypriot copper in Anatolia may have diminished the purchasing power of the Pontic copper that had hitherto dominated the Old Assyrian markets and, from thence, other interlocking circuits.152
As proposed by Yakubovich (2010:2 fn. 1), the toponyms Kaneš and Neša could be etymologically related as two different variants of a form *Knes.
It is symptomatic of the state of the art that some of the most recent overviews of Anatolian pre-Hellenistic civilizations (Sagona and Zimansky 2009; Steadman and McMahon 2011) almost completely ignore Western Anatolia in their respective sections on the Middle Bronze Age.
Michel 2008.
But see Heffron 2016 for the domestic stelae hosted in some kÄrum houses, which have been tentatively linked to Assyrian forms of the ancestorâs cult.
Michel 2011a; Waal 2012:288â289.
Cf. van den Hout 2020:24â37.
Lumsden 2008:32. Lumsden borrowed the concept of the âmiddle groundâ from Richard Whiteâs study of Franco-Algonquinian interactions in the Great Lakes region during the 19th century (White 1991). For further elaborations, see Larsen and Lassen 2014, Heffron 2017, and Highcock 2017.
Kt 93/k 145 and Kt n/k 504. See Michel and Garelli 1996, Günbattı 2001, and Larsen and Lassen 2014:176.
From this text we incidentally infer that the river ordeal, although very common in Lower Mesopotamia (cf. §â¯123 of Hammurapiâs Laws), was alien to Old Assyrian juridical practices. In contrast, this practice is well attested in Hittite texts (cf. hapÄ pai-: HED H:114).
Larsen and Lassen 2014.
Larsen and Lassen 2014:177â178.
Over time, the boundaries between aÅ¡Å¡Å«tum and amÅ«tum seem to have grown fuzzier. Barjamovic et al. 2012 mention amtum wifes who were later referred to as aÅ¡Å¡Ätum. Other cases (see Michel 2008:214) attest an undifferentiated use of aÅ¡Å¡atum and amtum, either by mistake or intentionally. On mixed families in Anatolian kÄrum society, see Michel 2020:444â445.
Stol 2016:217â219; Heffron 2017:73â74; Michel 2020:85â87.
Haase 1993; Hoffner 1997:40â42.
Cf. Giusfredi and Matessi 2021 for a discussion of these problems.
âWhat seems, however, acceptable, in the search for a connection [â¦] is that the crisis of the urbanized cultures of the Early Bronze Age, even though it happened for internal reasons, opened [â¦] demographic and political âgapsâ that were filled by neighboring peoples who were, on the basis of their lifestyles and economic typology, ready and able to begin exploiting specific resources and areas.â (Translation F. Giusfredi)
The collocation of PuruÅ¡handa is still debated, but its role in the Assyrian network is certain. However, see below, §â¯4, for the geographical context of Anatolia in the KÄrum period.
Cf. Dercksen 2002, Dercksen 2004a, Dercksen 2005, Vernet Pons and Vernet Pons 2019, and Giusfredi 2020a, with references to previous literature.
See Dercksen 2004a for a complete discussion of these terms, including the linguistically dubious form unuÅ¡Å¡u, on which see below, §â¯3.4.1.
Dercksen 2004a:150â154; Goedegebuure 2008:172.
Waalâs 2014 analysis is not universally accepted but, at best, debated. The matter seems to be undecidable and therefore the name Kulzia should be considered doubtful but still possibly Luwian.
Note, however, that -atti- male names also exist, e.g., Tuwatti-, a tabalite king of the Iron Age (quoted in many texts from the Kululu area, such as KULULU 1, §§â¯1, 7, 11, 13, 15, ÃÄ°FTLÄ°K §§â¯1, 2, 5, 11, 15; KAYSERI §â¯19; TOPADA §â¯1; MALATYA 6; KIRÅEHÄ°R §§â¯1, 2), so there is no reason to find the suffix surprising in a Luwian name.
For further discussion, see also Giusfredi 2020b.
See Carruba 1970:67, for occurrences and meaning.
On the Hittite -(m)a, cf. GrHL:305â399. On the Luwian -pa, cf. Giusfredi 2020c:173â175.
For an introduction to Old Assyrian grammar and graphemics, see Kouwenberg 2017a.
Cf. Dercksen 2004a; Giusfredi 2020a.
Cf. Dercksen 2004a.
For example, the seminal work by Bilgiç 1954 and, more recently, Dercksen 2004a, Schwemer 2005/2006, and Marazzi 2010.
For a different view, cf. Vernet Pons 2014, who suggested that a Luwian origin may be assumed in additional cases.
However, one should remember that it has been sensibly hypothesized that a number of Assyrian titles unique to the Old Assyrian corpus from Anatolia may be translations of local Anatolian designations (Michel 2011b:323).
Cf. Dercksen 2004a:140â141. On unuṯṯu in the Ugaritic texts, see van Soldt 2010:97, with references to previous scholarship. For the evidence from Alalah, see von Dassow 2008:162â163.
See Dercksen 2007:37â38. Other possible loans listed there are: uthurum, a mark or sign, mostly used in idiomatic expression in contracts, the of which etymology is doubtful and which may be connected to a word attested in Mari (at-har!; see Birot 1933:49; on the unlikelihood of a connection to Hattian uthuru see Dercksen 2004c); purulli, an official, whose etymology appears very tentative and which would also not be exclusive to kÄrum Akkadian; the problematic hapax aÅ¡tapiru and the apÅ¡uhu knife which, if originally Hurrian, would be the only term in this list who is currently unattested in Akkadian corpora outside KaneÅ¡. Not listed by Dercksen is the form matliÅ¡hum or matlihÅ¡um, presented as Hurrian by Lewy (1956:32), but for which no Hurrian comparanda actually exist. On Hurrian in the Old Assyrian corpus, see now also Giusfredi (forthcoming-c).
Contrary to the claim by Michel 2011a, the lack of the logographic plural was not necessarily a grammatical mistake. It could be merely as a sign of poor command of the logographic inventory.
Cf. Albayrak 2005:101.
Kloekhorstâs observation (2019:49) that Hattian should not be the model language for this mistake is an important remark. However, while it is true that grammatical gender agreement seems to exist in Hattian nominal morphology and the possessive prefixing system (cf. Simon 2012:100â108, 129â130 for a critical discussion), the typical Semitic marking of gender on the verbal inflection would have been as exotic for a Hattian speaker as it was for a Hittite or Luwian one.
For a critical discussion of the mistakes found in the Old Assyrian texts, see also Kloekhorst 2019:47â53.
The second case mentioned by Goedegebuure is less significant: in KTK 10 (Larsen 1972:100â101) the form Ha-tù-Å¡[a]-i-a[m] may well be built on an a-themed toponym, as per Hecker 1968, but the adjectival formation could be analogical or depend on a Semitic thematization.
Cf. Giusfredi and Pisaniello 2020.
It is a fact, however, that grammatical interference in Goedegebuureâs model is unidirectional, which would make of Hittite the substrate language. This is consistent with the prestige loans that entered Hittite, but it is surprising that the Hittite language, if it functioned as a substrate, only received the less than 30 loanwords that are attested in the Hittite archives.
Forlanini 2008; Barjamovic 2008 and 2011.
See KryszeÅ 2016:344, map 9, and Corti 2017a:232, with references to the literature.
On the copper trade in Old Assyrian Anatolia, see Dercksen 1996.
Ãzgüç 1966; Del Monte and Tischler 1978:323â324, s.v. âPuruÅ¡hantaâ; Del Monte 1992:128, s.v. âPuruÅ¡hantaâ; Kawakami 2006. For an alternative localization near Konya (more precisely, at Konya-Karahöyük), see Bilgiç 1945â1951:20; Alp 1994, and the arguments raised against it by Forlanini (2008:66).
Pace Forlanini (2008:65â67; 2012), Barjamovicâs reconstruction fits well with the Hittite evidence. In the Great Prayer of Muwattalli II (CTH 381), PuruÅ¡handa is grouped with UÅ¡Å¡a, Mount Huwatnuwanda, and the Hulaya River land in the paragraph devoted to the cults of the Lower Land, a region broadly corresponding to Classical Lycaonia (§â¯43; ii 38â40). This areal framework accords better with Barjamovicâs proposal than the traditional Cappadocian localization of PuruÅ¡handa at Acemhöyük.
Barjamovic et al. 2012:73â80.
Dercksen 2004b:140â144; Barjamovic 2011:375â376.
Neu 1974:14â15; Carruba 2003:50â53, with further references.
E.g., Neu 1974:35; Carruba 2003:128; Bryce 2005:39. According to Forlanini (2008:52), âthe king of Purushanda, although militarily weaker than Anitta, still enjoyed great prestige among Anatolian rulers.â
For similar views, see Güterbock 1938:139 and Steiner 1984:64.
Matessi 2016.
Rieken 2001.
Günbattı 1997.
Van de Mieroop 2000; Archi 2000; Torri 2009; Bachvarova 2016:166â198; Osborne 2018.
Van de Mieroop 2000:158â159.
Torri 2009.
See also Barjamovic 2021:129 Table 1.
The same holds true for the parallel that Barjamovic makes with the Hittite Empire division of Anatolia in Upper Land, Lower Land and Hatti.
Barjamovic 2011:154.
Weeden 2011:246.
ICK 1,1. According to this text and other documents in the same dossier (Landsberger 1950b), a partnership bought 15 1/2 shekels of amÅ«tum-metal in Hattum and, in Luhuzattiya, entrusted them to Å ahaya, who carried them to Hurama. In KaneÅ¡, Å ahaya cheated the investor by falsely claiming that he had settled a debt to the palace in KuÅ¡Å¡ar for the trade partnership. Whether real or not, the debt contracted in KuÅ¡Å¡ar might have derived from a loan received by the partnership en route to Hattum, irrespective of where the amÅ«tum-metal was purchased. The validity of Nashefâs proposal is also disputed by Dercksen 2001, 58. See also Barjamovic 2011:159.
Barjamovic 2011:158ff.
On Hatti and Hattuša, see, most recently, KryszeŠ2017.
Barjamovic 2011:292â293.
Barjamovic 2011:155â156.
Otten 1957; Barjamovic 2011:294â295.
Schwemer and Barjamovic in Schachner 2019:85â89.
Barjamovic 2011:158â159. But see Kt 92/k 105, 9: libbi mÄtim Å¡a Ḫattim, indicating that the âheartlandâ could (also) refer to just part of Hattum (Dercksen 2001:58). Landsberger (1950b) argued for an equivalence: Hattum = libbi mÄtim = mÄtum, with the meaning âcountryside.â The term mÄtum, however, is now understood to refer either to specific territories (Veenhof and Eidem 2008:174) or to Anatolia in general (sometimes even in contrast with Hattum: see below) as opposed to the City (Älum), i.e., AÅ¡Å¡ur (Larsen 1976:250; Barjamovic 2011:162; and Barjamovic 2021:129).
Günbattı 1997; van der Mieroop 2000:145â¯ff.
Hecker 1997:165â167; Veenhof 2008:18.
Barjamovic 2011:161â162.
Veenhof 2003.
On this problem, see Barjamovic et al. 2012:64â73.
Forlanini 2004a; Kryszat 2008aâb.
Kt g/t 35. See Balkan 1957; Michel 2001:no. 62.
Klinger 2014.
Miller 2001.
Barjamovic (2011:191) presents independent evidence for the possible absorption of Å alahÅ¡uwa under KaneÅ¡ rule during KÄrum Ib. Mentions of Luhuzattiya completely cease after KÄrum II, perhaps, but not necessarily, suggesting that this city had lost its independence.
Forlanini 2004a:370.
Miller 2001.
Neu 1974; Carruba 2003.
Or subject, according to earlier interpretations. See above, § 4.2.
Wilhelmi 2016:232. Pace Glatz 2020:61â62.
On the iqqÄti documents of Pithana and Anitta, see Kryszat 2008a.
Schwemer and Barjamovic in Schachner 2019:85â89.
Schwemer and Barjamovic in Schachner 2019:46â47.
Kryszat 2008b:207; Barjamovic et al. 2012:39.
Güterbock 1938; Carruba 2003; Archi 2015.
Steiner 1984; Giusfredi 2019.
Güterbock 1938; Carruba 2003:13â15; Archi 2015. Contra Neu 1974; Kloekhorst and Waal 2019, who argue for a Hittite primary composition.
Goetze 1957:92; Archi 2015:4.
But see Ãnal 2016, who analyzed the hunt scene within an Anatolian cultural framework, proposing that it was somehow functional in religious processions similar to those attested during the Hittite KI.LAM festival.
There are only two other Hittite sources that mention Å alatiwara: KBo 4.13 and KBo 27.31. The former is a cult list of places that, according to Forlanini (2007), amply draws from archaic and, possibly, even Old Assyrian sources. The fragment of a ritual text KBo 27.31 is a clear reminiscence of the Old Assyrian period, mentioning the merchants of KaneÅ¡ and Å alatiwara, and even the ummeÄnum-men! See Ãnal 1995:276; Forlanini 2008:60, fn. 14; and Barjamovic 2011:356.
Ãnal 1995.
As Kloekhorst and Waal acknowledge, KBo 3.22 and the other âcushion-shapedâ tablets display the typical Old Script ductus of Syrian origin, not the Old Assyrian one. The few texts with an atypical ductus found in the KÄrum Ib archives of KaneÅ¡ (see below, § 6) were all seemingly composed outside Anatolia, and thus are hardly proof that Anatolian chanceries of the KÄrum Ib period may have adopted non-Assyrian scribal habits for their official documentation. For a critical assessment of Kloekhorst and Waalâs proposal, see also Klinger 2022:312â326.
Zuzu is only attested in Kültepe iqqÄti documents, in which it is mentioned once as rubaâum, once as rubaâum rabûm and once, enigmatically, as rubaâum rabûm of the otherwise unknown town of Alahzina. See Kryszat 2008a:164â165; Barjamovic et al. 2012:39â40.
KulakoÄlu 2014:88â92.
Schachner 2021:10â14, 21â24.
Barjamovic 2018; Massa and Palmisano 2018.
Bilgiç 1992; Barjamovic 2011:8.
Hecker 1996; Michel 2010.
Wilhelm 2008. On the geography of HaÅ¡Å¡u, see Cohen 2017:297â298, with references to further literature.
Ceçen and Hecker 1995.
Kozal 2006:134â143, 146â153; Palmisano 2018:69â83, fig. 4.32.
Durand 2001; Charpin 2008.
Ãzgüç 2015:no. 10, fig. 40; Veenhof 2017b:254.
Ziegler 2009. On Zalwar and Tilmen Höyük, see Miller 2001; Barjamovic 2011:114â115; Marchesi 2013; and Cohen 2017:297.
Charpin 2008:106â107.
Durand 2001.
Cf. Guichard 2008.
Barjamovic 2011:8.
For the areal distribution, see Kozal 2006:134â143, 146â153; and, with somewhat different results, Palmisano 2018:69â83, fig. 4.32. It should be noted that no strict correlation existed between sealing traditions and the ethnicity of their owners. For example, Assyrians are attested who used Old Babylonian- or Old Syrian-style seals (TopçuoÄlu 2014).
Peyronel 2017; Massa and Palmisano 2018.
Renfrew et al. 1966.
Marchesi 2013.
Elsen-Novák and Novák 2020.
Girginer and Collon 2014.
Goldman 1956:230â¯ff., fig. 393, no. 28.35810; Palmisano 2018:72â74.
Bulu 2017; Bagh 2003.
Jean 2010:229â232.
Hrouda 1997; Marchetti 2011:80â81, 94â95, fig. 4.32; Palmisano 2018:74.
Ahrens 2019, with references to further literature.
Barjamovic 2019:76; Palmisano 2018:72â74.
Bulu 2017:104.
Massa et al. 2020; Barjamovic 2019.
Barjamovic 2011:335â336, 370â372; Barjamovic and Gander 2015.
Alp 1968. Some scholars identify Konya-Karahöyük with Ušša: see Forlanini 1998:226; Barjamovic and Gander 2015:507. But see also Forlanini 2008:67 for a proposed localization in the environs of Kadınhanı, northwest of Konya.
Palmisano 2018:54â56; Massa and Palmisano 2018.
For an up-to-date overview, see Pavúk and Horejs 2018:458â459, and the references therein.
The excavations recently started at Kaymakçı, in the Marmara Lake basin of the middle Gediz River valley, promise to provide important data that could begin to fill this gap (Roosevelt et al. 2018).
Blum 2012; Pavúk 2015.
Lloyd and Mellaart 1962.
Mellaart and Murray 1995:93.
E.g., Mellink 1967. See the reply to this and other critics in Mellaart 1970.
DedeoÄlu and Abay 2014.
In the new stratigraphy, level III is renamed level 6, and levels IV and V are split into levels 7 to 8 and 9 to 10, respectively.
Pavúk 2015; Blum 2016.
Blum 2016.
Blum 2016:97, with references to earlier literature; ÅerifoÄlu 2019:77â80.
Lloyd and Mellaart 1962:259.
Gunter 1991 and 2006.
E.g., Mellink 1967:8; Gunter 2006:355.
Mellaart 1970:58â62.
Mellaart 1970:62â65; MacSweeney 2010.
Joukowsky 1986; Günel 1999aâb; Kozal 2017:30.
Mee 1978.
Cline 1991:133.
Knapp 2008:307â308. In Anatolia, the first mention of Cyprus occurs in the abovementioned OA Sargonic legend Kt j/k 97 (l. 53), in a reference to a type of textile head covering.
Knapp 2018:98.
Keswani 2005; Knapp 2012.
Kozal 2017:88â89, 94.
Barjavomic 2011:374.